me.”

“Have you found a new guy yet?” I asked.

“No, I’m just working all the time and waiting for you to come home.”

“I’ll be home in a couple of months and then I’ll be annoying the hell out of you again soon enough,” I

said.

“You can boss me around any time, I’ll just be happy to see you again.”

“I’ll call you soon again okay,” I said.

“Okay, make it quick,” he said before he hung up.

I couldn’t stop smiling as I put down the phone. I was so happy that he wasn’t seeing anyone. I know it

was irrational to be so jealous all the time, especially since I fucked Remi almost every week, but I didn’t

want another guy touching my David. And I definitely didn’t want him to be in love with another guy.

I now called David on a more regular basis and when his birthday came up I decided that I had to get

him something. This year I couldn’t just pretend to have forgotten like I’d done in the past.

I talked to Remi about what to get David for his birthday. We were watching MTV on his crappy TV

and all of a sudden this old Bob Dylan video was on; the one were he’s holding up signs with the lyrics of

the song on them. “You should do that,” Remi said “I’ll make some pictures of you in the city holding up

signs with ‘Happy Birthday’ one them.”

“That sounds pretty corny actually but I think David might like it,” I said. So Remi and I got dressed and

rushed down to the nearest office supplies store to buy big sheets of white paper and a black marker pen. I

wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ on one of the sheets of paper and ‘Have a great day’, ‘Greetings from Paris’ and

‘Don’t drink too much’ on the others. On the last one I wrote ‘I miss you’.

Remi and I headed to all kinds of tourist attractions throughout the city. We did the ‘Happy Birthday’

picture in front of the Eiffel tower and ‘Have a great day’ in front of the Centre Pompidou. Then we did

the ‘Don’t drink too much’ in front of the weird colored statues next to the Centre Pompidou and the

“Greetings from Paris’ in front of the Arc de Triomphe. We saved the last sheet of paper for the Notre

Dame, where in the garden at the backside of the cathedral I held up the ‘I miss you’ sign. People were

looking at us; two guys with some big white sheets and a camera can attract a lot of attention. I tried not to

give a shit and to smile on the pictures.

The pictures turned out great and I emailed them to David on his birthday. I send him a text message too

on his mobile saying “Happy birthday, go check your e-mail.” He called me a couple of minutes later.

“Thank you,” he said when I picked up the phone. “It’s the best gift ever.”

“You liked the pictures?”

“Yeah I liked them. And I liked it even more that you haven’t forgotten my birthday this year.” I heard a

sob on the other side of the line and for a moment I was afraid that David would burst into tears. He could

control himself luckily.

“I never forgot,” I blurted out before I could think.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said.

“Don’t hang up,” I asked and then I send him the last picture. I’d taken that last one alone in my

apartment without Remi’s help. That last picture had me holding up a sheet of paper without any text on

in. Instead I’d just drawn a clumsy heart and held the paper in front of my chest. I hadn’t been sure if I

should send it to David but after hearing his voice I needed to. A couple of seconds later he saw the

picture in his e-mail.

“That’s the best one,” he said and I could hear his voice crack. I could still hear tears in his voice.

“I hope you have a great birthday,” I said.

“Yeah thanks, I’m really happy you called.”

“I was also hoping you’d say that. I’m happy I called too. I’ll call you again soon,” I said before I hung

up.

After David’s birthday I started calling him every week, sometimes even more often. I also send him emails

with pictures of Paris and even a postcard with Oscar Wilde on it; who had lived in Paris before

his death. I knew that David loved Oscar Wilde, his dad used to read to him from Oscar’s fairy tales

when he was a kid. He had the book on his nightstand back home.

I’d even started to make little videos for him with my camera, filming my room and showing him my

view from my window, blowing him a kiss before I turned it off. He sent me bare-chested pictures of

himself in return that showed the new tattoo on his back. I never liked tattoos but this one on David looked

great, he’d made the drawing for it himself.

“You look so much happier now that you’re speaking to your brother again,” Remi said when I saw him

later that week. The evening before, David and me had talked on Skype for an hour and I was soaring

from happiness just to hear his voice for such a long time and to make him laugh at one of my stupid jokes.

I longed to get home and I even didn’t feel like sleeping with Remi any more.

22. Glenn in Paris

Finally in the last two months of my stay in Paris, Glenn came over from New York to stay with me.

We’d been exchanging emails on occasion but I really missed having my best friend around. I was so

excited to see him that I couldn’t sleep properly the night before his arrival.

He would arrive at the airport around noon and then go by train to Gare du Nord, the largest train

station of the city, where I would pick him up. When I saw him stepping out of the train with his suitcase, I

ran up to him and hugged him hard. He hugged me back.

“It’s fucking great to see you,” he said and laughed. “You look amazing, almost European.”

“You look great too,” I said. Glenn had cut his hair in this old-fashioned forties haircut, which looked

exceptionally good on him. He was wearing a nicely cut brown suit, like he just stepped out of a

Humphrey Bogart movie.

“Come on show me your place,” he said. “I really need a drink, I’ve been sitting next to a woman with

a crying baby for eight hours.”

We took a taxi to my apartment and I hauled up his suitcase up the stairs for him. I showed him around

and when he came out of the shower in some fresh clothes, I handed him a cold beer. He laughed, “So are

we going out tonight or what?”

We went out that evening, even though Glenn was pretty exhausted from the flight. It was good to be

together again. I’d missed Glenn’s clever wits and his brooding charm. I’d even missed his rude manners

and the way he always knew what I was thinking. I decided to show Glenn a small club not far from my

apartment. The place was crowed, even though it was a weekday and it was impossible to have a real

conversation with the music blasting my eardrums. We danced and drank and flirted with some guys, just

like we used to back in New York. But then it was really getting late and Glenn was starting to look tired.

He’d been up for more than 24 hours and he really needed to get some sleep.

“So how are things here?” he asked when we were walking home at 04:00 AM after that exhausting

night of partying.

“Things are pretty good,” I said. “But even better now that you’re around.”

“Are you seeing someone?”

“I’m seeing this French guy, Remi, I’ll introduce you to him tomorrow. He’s really nice but it’s more of

a casual thing and not an actual relationship.” He smiled.

“So how’s your brother?” he asked casually.

“He’s fine,” I said, hoping that he would not press the subject.

“Is David seeing someone back in Fresno?”

“No.”

“He hasn’t visited you?”

“No.”

“But things are still the same between the two of you?” he asked carefully. “Yeah, pretty much.” I

answered with a sigh.

“So how has it worked out being colleagues then?” “Why do you think I’m here again?” I replied.