The two men had known each other for more than twenty years but had never shared a meal together without their wives. Roger made it for dinner, not the lunch Jonathan expected, and also chose the place. The address turned out to be a dark and musty bar, the kind that smells damply of sex and regret, with brass fixtures and mahogany tables polished to a shine. At one time Jonathan had known places like this quite well. The memories hit as he opened the door, into the hormonal surge of voices, the thump of music, the stench of cigarettes and booze. On his right men sat with legs apart and a drink turning in their hands. On his left couples huddled in booths, frantically drinking and smoking. The women were all hunched forward, focused on the faces of the men, who, as Jonathan swept past, were all telling stories about themselves.

Amid the haze of smoke and liquor he brushed past two women on high stools at a counter so small their knees rubbed the brass pole beneath it. Their eyes locked in his. Jonathan, unused to women he didn't know making eye contact in public places, looked through them and hurried to the bar where Roger was to meet him. The bar was a step down, and the drop surprised him. He didn't trip, exactly, but he almost did. He had been indecisive by not confronting the women's eyes, and the almost-trip confirmed it. It brought back the time in his past when he was often in bars like this, and he was in no mood to be reminded of that.

He ordered a rusty nail when the bartender (a burly rough-hewn type, the kind who sees himself as irresistible to women) placed his elbows on the glossy wood and stared into Jonathan's eyes. It couldn't be his usual white wine. No, not here. As the bartender mixed his drink (still facing him, but the smile had lost its warmth; had the rusty nail disappointed him?) Jonathan twisted around to check the women on the stools. He had to bend over to see around a brass post, but managed it without toppling. The women were chatting nonstop with their eyes scanning the room like radar. One had blond hair that fell in corkscrews along her shoulders and dark stockings that shaped her legs superbly. (She was his favorite. He'd always had a weakness for blondes in dark stockings.) As she scanned the room she tugged a curl, spinning it through a crooked finger. Jonathan stared so long her radar eyes caught him. She stared back, managing the angle of the room shrewdly and whispering to her friend. So consumed was he by her gaze – its steadiness, its shrewdness, its icy focus – that he was not alarmed when it took the shape of a hand on his shoulder, squeezing hard.

It was Roger.

"Come on," he said. "The table's right here."

The table was by the bar, in the same lower portion of the room. The view dramatized the blonde in dark stockings, lifting her so high that Jonathan felt he could see up her skirt. Her posture begged it. Though neither she nor her friend was looking near them, both crossed their legs the instant the men sat.

Roger smiled at them. They refused to smile back but stared, with startling intensity, and absolutely no expression.

"This cool or what?" Roger said.

"Those two?"

"Those two what? This place, Man."

"Yeah," Jonathan said.

"I knew you'd dig it. S'why I picked it."

Roger grabbed the ashtray, a block of yellowish glass, holding it up to test its weight. It was a feint. Like a magician, he snapped a cigarette into his fingers. That was why he had chosen a table near the bar, so he could smoke. Roger had been smoking for years, on the sly from Evie, his wife. Jonathan looked away (when did smoking slip from a bad habit into deviant behavior?) by turning to the women, who had resumed their radar sweeps of the room.

Roger leaned into a disposable lighter and lit up, with the stealth of an adult smoker. He inspected Jonathan's clothes, as he did every time they met.

"Nice jacket," he said. "I like the fit."

"Yeah, sure," Jonathan said. "Anyway."

"Anyway another Vodka tonic, for what I'm going to tell you. Let's get this crazy show on the road."

Roger signaled the waiter, a thin man with a goatee whose blue eyes sparkled as he saw Roger's hand. The goatee made it hard not to notice his solid jaw. He approached with an athlete's confidence, swaying his elbows and hips. Slapping the menu on his thigh, he skipped down the step Jonathan had nearly tripped over.

"Hi, I'm Chris, and I'll be your server tonight," he said, smiling as if they all shared a secret. His blue eyes lingered over Jonathan. His rapport with him seemed far more special.

Jonathan ordered another rusty nail, scotch and Drambuie he reminded himself, but what the hell. No way could he go with wine now. He always went a little overboard with Roger, who had no limits whatsoever. Roger got another vodka tonic, even though he was on doctor's orders to be careful what he ate and drank, and was ignoring it as usual.

As Chris scribbled the order, Jonathan noticed that he was a lefty.

After he was gone, Jonathan said, "Where were these chicks when I needed them."

"Chicks?" Roger said. "These chicks?"

How he hated that part of his friend, when he would feign confusion to make someone feel like a fool. For years he'd been doing it, even to Evie.

"Hey," Roger said. "I saw this Viagra commercial on TV. "

Jonathan was stunned. With the music blaring at the bar, it wasn't necessary to speak quietly but he did, to make Roger comfortable.

"Saw it too," he said. "All I can say is, I don't need it, but hey, it's nice to know it's out there." The Viagra phenomenon fascinated him. There were a hundred dimensions he wanted to explore.

Roger said nothing, just puffed on his cigarette.

"For when we're ninety-five," Jonathan said. "I mean."

"Who the hell knows at ninety-five."

Jonathan laughed, but he wasn't sure what the joke was. Roger had a knack for being ambivalent. He was an engineer, and it seemed that was why he could balance more than one meaning so precisely that Jonathan couldn't tell which was the intended one.

Chris placed their drinks down and said, "Here you go, guys."

The glasses stuck on the table, a wood varnished to such a sheen it seemed metallic. Jonathan had to peel his glass up to slide it toward him.

"We'll worry about dinner in a bit," Roger said, without consulting him.

It was another annoying habit. With the clarity of the rusty nails Jonathan saw Roger as Evie did. It was the joke of many a dinner, how as a man Roger thought only of himself and was insensitive to anyone's needs except his own – yet was hypersensitive when those were ignored.

"Fine," Jonathan said, wondering how Evie could tolerate it. "No problem."

Music floated across the room. Was there anything lonelier than tinny music in a bar? Jonathan breathed it deeply, the woozy pleasure of it.

"I need to tell you something kind of important," Roger said.

His voice had cracks. A guitar strummed into the open spaces.

Roger's father died of a heart attack at fifty-three, he had told Jonathan at a much earlier dinner. Afterward they had walked, their wives trailing in their own conversation. Fifty-three was far off back then, and the men had talked of their work, about which they had grand ambitions; computers, which were supposed to be soon on everyone's desk; and children, which neither of them honestly wanted but both knew were in their immediate future.

"The health thing," Jonathan said. "Tell me, what's the latest?"

They sipped their drinks. The guitar twanged and the air shook. For Jonathan it was a radiant moment: two old friends nursing drinks as one opens up about something that terrifies him.

"Nothing, really," Roger said. "Don't give a shit, to tell the truth. I mean, I just had Buffalo wings at the bar. Grease City, Man, but I truly love it! I'm not even sure I want dinner! Life's too short. And what Evie doesn't know won't hurt her."

"But you're making it shorter," Jonathan said, the rusty nails rising in a cloud of smoke and booze that settled over his head. "And what she doesn't know might hurt you."

Was it the rusty nails talking?

"You were warned! Remember what the doc said, 'you're trying to commit suicide.' Didn't the goddamn doc say that? Didn't he?"

The "goddamn doc" was definitely the rusty nails.

"I guess he did," Roger admitted.

The way he said it made Jonathan's affection for his friend well up like a need to cry. He squelched it, of course, but stood and reached for Roger's shoulder, his suit jacket opening wide. Roger pulled back, and Jonathan's swinging jacket nearly toppled their drinks.

He sat back down.

"The thing is about Gordon," Roger said. "What I have to tell you. It's about Gordon."

"Hey, I heard –" Jonathan took a swig "– he's got another new girlfriend."

"Close," Roger said. "Close, but no cigar."

"I know he gets around."

"Actually," Roger said. "To make a long story short."

"To make a long story short, what?"

"To make a long story short, he's gay."

Roger stubbed out his cigarette, using all the room in the block of carved-out yellow glass that served as ashtray, and lit another with his lighter.

"He's gay," Jonathan said. "Is that why you wanted to meet here?"

"Here?" Roger said.

"I mean, tell me about it."

"Nothing to tell. He told us last week. In an e-mail."

The shift that happened when Jonathan drank happened then. Everyone around him got looser, women more flirtatious, jokes were funnier, even irony became more ironic. Everything became more of what it was except pain, which lost its edge. That was the best part.

Tonight it gave him the boldness to stare at the blonde on the stool. She was watching someone else, but her radar picked him up. She stopped fingering her curls, and her eyes locked sharply in his. The sharpness of her gaze brought back the night a year ago when Hope stood next to the microwave and declared that the man from work she talked about incessantly was not a friend but, yes, a lover. She pronounced the crucial word in two sharp syllables, "Lov-ver," splitting it into halves that wrapped and unwrapped, like bodies in sex, one of them his wife's, the other another man's. Without waiting for a reaction she punched "six" on the microwave, showing him the back of her blue suit – she had worked late again – the body that had been made love to by another man, that had split in two and come back together, in pursuit of something she wasn't getting from Jonathan, or something (even now the thought stabbed) better.

All he could say was, "Isn't that way too long to warm up a slice of pizza?"

He turned to Roger and said, "In an e-mail?"

"Yup," Roger said. "We're talking total shock. But Evie said she knew all along, and was waiting for him to come out to us."

The phrase rolled off his tongue. Roger was practicing a new vocabulary.

"It must have been hard for you," Jonathan said.

This was from the couples counseling he and Hope had gone to. It was their counselor's favorite phrase.

"Hard for me? Or hard for him? To tell us?"

Jonathan had not meant that, though Roger would not be an easy father to come out to. When told about Hope's affair, Roger's only comment had been, "So what the hell'd you tell her?" as if he was the one who had been betrayed.

"Hey. Hey! Roger! Baby!"

A woman in her twenties in a tight black dress with a leather string tying the top together was at the brass post beside their table.

"Hey," Roger said. "Tina, Jonathan, this is Tina. She works with me."

"Works?" Tina said, without turning to see who Jonathan was. "No one works." She shrugged. Her breasts, already puffed up under the string, seemed to inflate.

"Well you're in the same office as me. A draftsman. Drafts person! Is that what I should say?"

"Actually Jonathan, I work for him," she said. "For your friend here."

"Nice dress," Roger said, in the brazen way he had smiled at the women on the stools.

"You like?" Tina said. "I'm a party girl, you know."

"Sure I like. Filing a sexual harassment suit for me saying this?"

"I just might, Boss!"

She spat out "Boss," turning it crass and hard, as if it meant "fuck" in a different language.

She finally turned to face Jonathan and said, "Hi Jonathan, Roger's friend."

She flipped her head at the women on the stools and said, "I hope you know those two up there are looking at you. Those two girls behind me."

"Women," Roger said.

"Whatever," Tina said. "They look lonely."

"They do?" Roger said.

"Yeah," Tina said. "And know what they think? You guys are the lonely ones."

"Us?" Jonathan said.

"Yes, you," Tina said. "But you're not, right? Guys never get lonely. They just go out and get laid."

It was what he had accused Hope of doing. The harshness of it still jarred him.

"But us girls don't do that. We go out looking for a sweet night of love."

"Women," Roger said.

"Whichever."

"Affection" was what Hope told the counselor she was after. He had nodded and asked Jonathan if that was hard to hear. Jonathan said "Yes," which was no doubt true, but it also suggested why he had been frequenting bars like the one he was in tonight.

He turned to the blonde on the stool. She was watching him and looked away. In the process he caught Chris's eye. Chris held his gaze until Jonathan looked away.

"Another round for all of us," Roger said, signaling Chris, who ambled over and smiled at Jonathan, their private joke again, more intimate with the recent eye contact.

"Not for me," Tina said. "One too many already."

"You think I'm trying to get you drunk?" Roger said.

"I don't know," Tina asked. "Are you?"

"Well what do you think?"

"Me? I'm two drinks past being able to think," Tina said. "Ha! But hey, you're looking at a party girl, so Baby, I gotta go party."

"So go," Roger said.

As if to tease him for not being nice, she bent down and kissed Roger on the lips. The kiss hovered between friendly and sexual. Roger's engineering was evident again, to calibrate the contact so cleverly.

"Okay, Boss!" Tina said.

The men asked Chris for another as they watched Tina saunter back to the bar.

"Who's this Tina?" Jonathan asked.

"Tina? She's from work."

"I know she's from work. Don't we have wives?"

"Sheesh! I'm just having some fun," Roger said.

Jonathan was disarmed. He felt too much at once. This was happening more and more, being overwhelmed by what should be the normal playing out of events. But events in Jonathan's life had lately acquired a particular sharpness; all his missteps ended in a fall. It had begun with Hope at the microwave.

"So," Jonathan said. "With Gordon."

"Yes," Roger said. "Good old Gordon."

Roger was through talking about it but Jonathan pressed on.

"How does Evie feel about it? Is it hard on her?"

"He won't be lonely anymore, she said." Roger looked toward the bar. "Which is good. Then she obsessed on not having grandkids, which is a big deal to her for some reason. But she likes that he can tell us about his relationships. Whatever they may be."

Roger lifted his glass, touched it to his lips, and put it back on the glittering wood.

"There's nothing wrong with it. You know that."

"Of course I know that," Roger said.

"But how do you feel about it?"

"I don't feel anything," Roger said. "It's his life."

"Yeah, but …"

Roger's attention was on Tina, who was giggling with a man at the bar. Her breasts from the distance were two balloons squeezed into a too-tight box. At any moment one could pop.

"Party girl," Jonathan said.

"That's her, " Roger said and bolted to his feet. "Back in a sec."

He was off to the bar.

Chris materialized with their drinks. He seemed to have been waiting to get Jonathan alone.

"Hey guy, let me know if you want anything else. Anything."

To avoid his blue eyes, Jonathan looked at the blonde, but her stool had been abandoned. He studied the empty stool until Chris drifted off. He tracked the blonde, and found her at the bar with Tina, then with Roger, and they were all walking toward him.

"I'm glad you didn't try to follow me this time," Roger said.

"I have to hear that story, Boss," Tina said.

"I'm Carrie, by the way," the blonde said. "So you're Jonathan, I hear?"

"She knows all about you," Tina said. "Sorry."

Up close Carrie had an eager voice and nervous hands. Her legs disappeared under the table, and Jonathan turned to check the blonde on the stool, even though she was now sitting across from him.

"So finish the bathroom story," Carrie said, a hand leaping to her hair.

"Yeah, Baby," Tina said. "It's so funny!"

Roger grabbed his refilled drink. He loved to tell this story.

"Well, I'm supposed to meet Jonathan at the game," he said, smoke erupting from his mouth, drink in hand. "I have a few beers and go take a leak. While I'm standing in front of the urinal I see this guy next to me who I think is Jonathan."

"So he's next to you," Carrie said.

"Yeah, so I say – remember, you never look next to you in a men's room."

"Never?" Tina said. "You never look?"

"Never!" Carrie said. "It's etiquette. My boyfriend explained it to me. Before he dumped me."

She seemed to realize this was a stupid thing to say.

"You men are so weird!" Tina said.

"Tell me about it," Carrie said, vaguely about her boyfriend. "So?"

"So I'm thinking it's Jonathan. I say, 'Hey big guy, figured I'd find you here with your dick in your hand like we planned!' I thought it was pretty funny."

"It's hysterical," Carrie said. "Hysterical."

"But I get this dead silence," Roger said. "So I turn and see it's a total stranger, who looks liked Jonathan from the side."

"It wasn't you?" Carrie said to Jonathan. And to Roger, "So you did what?"

"Well, I thought of saying, 'Sorry, I thought you were my friend,' but I didn't think that would be too smart."

"You men really are weird," Tina said.

"Truly," Carrie said, twirling her curls.

"You know we didn't have dinner," Jonathan said, to Roger. He sounded piqued. He hated when he sounded that way, but Roger could be so insensitive.

"We're not," Roger said. "I mean, me and Tina aren't. We're heading somewhere, aren't we?"

"You're the boss, Boss."

"I'll take care of the check," Roger said.

Before Jonathan could react Roger was on his feet. He snatched the check from Chris (who didn't look up) and went to the bar to pay. Jonathan chased him.

"Roger," he said, into the boozy shudder of music at the bar. "I don't care who the hell pays, but why are you so weird tonight? At least take care of your health. You got Evie, you got Gordon."

Saying Evie's name aloud was a mistake. Mentioning Gordon's was even worse. But since it was out there, Jonathan added, "You know, he's still the same kid."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"And your health? What's the deal with that?"

"We're paid up to now," Roger said. "I don't know this Carrie, but hey, it's your call."

"Are you listening? You got me, Man," Jonathan said. "I don't want to lose you."

Roger turned so decisively that Jonathan thought he might hug him. But it was only to sign the check, which he did with a flourish. He had always done that, sign restaurant checks like they were the Declaration of Independence.

And that was that.

At the table, Tina took Roger's arm and said, "So we're off, Boss."

"Indeed," Roger said. And to Jonathan, "Promise me you'll be good if I leave you all alone with my friend Carrie?"

"He'll be good," Carrie said, spinning curls through a fist, flashing red highlights. "Feel like another drink? I think I do. Let's get that cute waiter guy over here."

As Jonathan watched Roger walk off he had a vision, not about Carrie, who was pulling at her hair and examining the liquor menu, or of Tina, who was leaning on a brass post as Roger opened the door for her. What he saw was that one day the heart condition Roger ignored would take him, and Jonathan would be alive when his friend was dead. He would attend Roger's funeral with Hope at his side, kiss Evie, and shake hands with Gordon. He would push from his mind a night like this; everything that had happened would mean nothing at all, except that he had been with his friend and that now his friend was gone. It might even be a story he would tell, with slight modification and a humorous touch, and everyone would laugh and weep as he told it. As Carrie twirled her hair and waited for him to turn back to her, Jonathan foresaw his friend's death, which would surely come before his own, and forgave him all. Then, alone in the stink of the bar, he mourned.