Matthew remembered how he had made a deal with Lukas, how they had arranged to go up the coast the following week together, how Lukas had said Matthew could drive his car, and he remembered shaking hands with Lukas, but still, he didn’t ring Lukas.

He supposed Lukas would phone him, though he both did and didn’t want this to happen. He wanted to drive Lukas’ car, but didn’t think he could see Lukas again.

Over the weekend, the weather got warmer. Monday and Tuesday were particularly warm for the time of year, and by Wednesday, when it was warmer still, Matthew supposed he really should phone Lukas as it was perfect weather for going to the beach, or as perfect as one could expect it to be in spring.

He even began to dial Lukas’ number, but put the phone down again, persuading himself that he couldn’t go to the beach anyway. He had shaved the hair under his arms.

On Thursday, it was wet and cold, with a squally wind blowing, and a driving rain. He stayed in bed until eleven, bored, and wondering what the hell he was going to do all day.

Matthew wondered sometimes if his whole life wouldn’t be like this. When he came of age, in a few years time, his grandmother was going to give him an inheritance. He had calculated it would bring him something in the order of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. He would never have to work. But what was he going to do?

He had a vague idea of performing on a stage, but supposed piano players, even very good ones, weren’t in great demand these days. It wasn’t the nineteenth century, and he wasn’t that good. And anyway, the only time he really enjoyed playing the piano was when he was home on his own.

He wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off, if, like his father, he had been cut off by his own mother (by his own family), and told to expect nothing.

This was what had happened, of course, when his father had married his mother. Matthew’s grandmother had refused to give his father any further help, and was now giving a fortune to Matthew, the reason, Matthew sometimes thought, for the underlying tension between his father and himself, which, as far as Matthew could see, had started when his grandmother had given him the boat for his sixteenth.

Matthew’s father was a G.P. He wasn’t wealthy. They were really not rich at all in comparison to most of Matthew’s friends, but Matthew would be richer, or at least as rich as his father, without ever having to do anything at all.

He groaned, and felt sick. He had been lying in his room for days, stuck in the house, on the net, or downstairs practising, and wanking in his room; doing nothing, really, because he had had nowhere to go, and no one he could go with. Christian hadn’t answered his phone since the day before Matthew had taken Lukas out on the boat. There had been the message about the key, and then nothing. And Matthew had borrowed his mother’s car yesterday and gone over to Christian’s house, but there had been no one home.

During the week, he had tried some of the other guys, had tried to phone Nathan and Brad and Tom and Joel and Drew, but none of the guys seemed to want to do anything these days. He didn’t want to try Greg or Vince, after he had stood them up, but had even tried Dale on Wednesday, a guy he didn’t even like. Dale had said he was addicted to a game he had just got, a VR game, and went on to tell Matthew all about how he had a headset and everything, but didn’t invite Matthew over, Matthew noticed. The guy was a cockhead anyway. He had always been a cockhead. Matthew didn’t care.

The problem was that Matthew had had that dream again, Wednesday night, the one where he was fucking Lukas’ arse, and feeling Lukas’ groin – a thing that couldn’t be real because Lukas had had nothing there, no hole, no scar, nothing – just a smooth patch of firm skin.

And he had been thinking about Lukas also. Thinking about what it would have been like to crush Lukas’ balls in the vice, to cut Lukas’ sack off with the saw. And not just his sack. Imagining what it would have been like stretching Lukas’ cock out as well and cutting all of Lukas’ gear off. And the feel of Lukas’ testicles in his fingers. Their soft warmth. Thinking how it would be like to crush Lukas’ balls between his fingertips.

And he had been wanking about these things! he told himself Thursday morning.

No wonder he was feeling sick.

He told himself he wouldn’t wank about any of that stuff again and would stop thinking about it.

It rained again on Friday, on Saturday, on Sunday. He read Mr Sorensen’s novel, a story about a woman who thought she was living an ideal life, only to wake up and find that she had been in a coma, dreaming it. This happened about half way through the book, and then she spent the rest of the story in a psychiatric ward.

All of Mr Sorensen’s novels were like that.

On Monday, there was sunshine again, though it wasn’t warm. Christian phoned at nine.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Matthew began.

‘We went to Rome.’

‘To Rome?’

‘To an exhibition. One of my mother’s ideas.’

‘That’s a hell of a long way to go to an exhibition.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Was it any good?’

‘Nyah.’

Matthew turned over and looked at the ceiling. He didn’t know what to say. Christian began again.

‘Do you want to come over?’

‘To your place?’

‘Sure. I always come over there.’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

Matthew didn’t really like going over to Christian’s. There was something about the house which he didn’t like. It was dark and austere, built like a German hunting lodge, and with a strange odour.

And then there was Christian’s mother, who was so odd, and had filled the house with bizarre artworks. She owned a gallery on Fifth.

‘My father gave me the Alfa,’ Christian said.

‘The 156? That’s okay.’

Christian came by about fifteen minutes later, pointing out to him how the 156 was the only modern car without a design floor, aesthetically speaking, as they drove back to Christian’s place, going by the KFC. Some girls walked across the drive-through in front of them, turning around and looking at the two of them in the car, their eyes drawn magnetically to Christian, his colourless blue eyes against his dark hair, flashing like mirrors in the sunshine.

They were wearing mini-skirts and boob-tubes.

‘Skanks,’ Christian said.

Matthew said nothing.

‘I mean, would you wear a boob-tube? If you were a woman?’

‘What? What the fuck are you talking about?’

Christian was giving the order.

‘Do you want it upsized?

‘Not really.’

They ate in Christian’s kitchen, a place where Matthew felt reasonably comfortable, only having to look at one incomprehensible painting, and a tortured statue, both of them rather less disturbing than most of Mrs Mueller’s choices.

He had to wonder how she managed to run a profitable gallery when everything she liked was a mixture of blood, sex, torture and sinister machinery.

They went up to Christian’s room, where Matthew chanced to walk to the window in time to see a taxi pull up at the front gates. He watched the door open and frowned as he saw Lukas?, yes, Lukas, get out of the cab, his blond hair ruffled by the wind. He was wearing the same bone fisherman’s sweater that Matthew had last seen him in, and a pair of fawn cords with green runners. He paid the driver, and walked across to the gateway at the end of the footpath, carrying a satchel slung over one shoulder. He pressed the intercom, and waited.

‘Lukas is here,’ Matthew said.

‘Yeah?’

‘He’s pressing your buzzer.’

Christian looked over from where he was standing by the desk, looking past Matthew and out of the window where he would have been able to see Lukas at the end of the path.

‘Yeah. He sees my dad,’ Christian said, turning his head down and rifling through some papers.

‘Your dad?’

‘I told you. He’s sick,’ Christian said.

Christian’s father was a psychiatrist.

‘Did your dad tell you that?’

‘You’re a doctor’s son. What do you think?’

‘Sorry.’

The gate opened and Lukas began to walk towards the house, walking directly towards the window above which Matthew was standing, but with his head turned down. He didn’t look very happy.

‘I might go down and say hi to him,’ Matthew said.

‘If you want.’

‘Are you coming?’

Christian was frowning at a piece of paper. ‘No. I try to avoid him.’

‘Oh, well, I’m going to go down,’ Matthew said, walking across the room and hesitating at the door.

‘If you like.’

Matthew opened the front door and came down the steps in time to see Lukas turning the corner at the end of the house, walking around the side to where the surgery was.

‘Lukas!’ Matthew called.

Lukas stopped, about to turn the corner. He looked around, and frowned. He had the sunshine in his eyes and didn’t recognise Matthew, Matthew supposed, his blond hair fanning in the wind.

‘Wait up a minute!’ Matthew called.

It was thirty or forty paces to where Lukas was standing.

‘Hey,’ Matthew said, coming up to him, breathless.

Lukas winced, and stepped back a little as though he thought Matthew was going to hit him.

He looked like he was going to fall. Matthew put his hand out and held Lukas’ upper arm.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Are you okay?’

Lukas nodded, and swallowed, and winced, struggling against the sunlight, his pale face white.

‘You look like you’re going to faint,’ Matthew said. He saw that he was holding Lukas’ arm but didn’t think that he could take his hand away. Lukas was limp.

Was he afraid of Matthew?

Matthew took his hand away.

‘We were supposed to go up the coast,’ Matthew said.

Lukas swallowed, and nodded. ‘I didn’t think you’d…’

‘I tried to…well, I don’t know. I thought you’d call me.’

‘Sorry,’ Lukas managed.

‘Are you angry with me?’

‘Angry with you? No.’

There was a moment of silence. Matthew turned his head around and looked at the garden. And then he turned around behind him as though there was something there to look at. When he turned back again, Lukas was shading his hands with his eyes, and adjusting his satchel on his shoulder. It looked heavy.

‘Sorry about hurting you so much with that…’

Lukas’ white face turned red. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said, choking on every word. There was a pause. ‘It just felt good to get it off.’

Matthew nodded and remembered how Lukas had been crying after he had fallen on the edge of the tub, after Matthew had forced his testicle through and then pulled him up roughly so that his balls were trapped beneath him.

And he saw in his mind a moment, after he had pulled Lukas off the vice, when Lukas had been suspended like a bridge, his head on Matthew’s shoulders at one end, his balls on the vice at the other.

Matthew had been rough with him.

No wonder it felt good to get it off.

‘I bet,’ he said. ‘You won’t be doing that again in a hurry.’

‘No,’ Lukas said, making an O with his mouth though barely a sound.

Lukas looked at Matthew’s feet.

‘How about next week, then?’

‘Next week?’

‘Going up the coast.’

‘Sure. If you want to,’ Lukas said.

‘Really? You don’t look very happy about it. If you don’t want to, we don’t have to. I mean, you don’t have to let me drive your car.’

‘But I’ve said you can.’

‘Well, we’ll go next week then. Is that okay?’

Lukas swallowed and looked up at Matthew. It was as though he wanted to say something but was afraid he couldn’t say it.

‘I have to see Dr Mueller,’ he said.

Matthew nodded. Was that what Lukas was worried about, what Matthew would think of him for seeing a shrink?

‘Well, I’ll ring you,’ Matthew said. ‘Definitely.’

Lukas smiled and they said they’d see each other, though as Matthew walked up the stairs, he had the idea that Lukas would be crying now, standing around the corner of the house and crying, simply because someone had been kind to him.

I’ll definitely ring him. Definitely, Matthew said to himself, walking across the landing towards Christian’s door. ‘I don’t care if he’s a fucking faggot.’

‘Well that’s good,’ Christian said, overhearing him, as Matthew came into the room, ‘because he doesn’t care if you’re not one.’

Matthew stopped in front of Christian and moved his hands, exasperated.

‘Have you got that key?’