The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber

a vintage Irish whiskey he rarely shares, I knew Mickey was in like Flynn. (Who was Flynn, anyway? Some charming Irishman or other, no doubt.) They stayed up talking and drinking until three or four in the morning. By the time Mickey finally came to bed I was sound asleep, having read until the book—my dog-eared high school copy of Maugham’s
Cakes and Ale
—dropped on the blanket a few times, and I had finally given up and turned out the light.
    They did it again the second night, and though I was beginning to feel neglected, there was something quite wonderful, too, about the intensity of their affinity. I fell into a peaceful sleep, listening to the low murmuring of the voices of the two men I love.
    It was the first Christmas since the accident when I hadn’t felt so lost and alone that all I wanted to do waslie comatose until after New Year’s when I could go back to work.
    “I want you to pick one out,” he said, looking at me with sudden seriousness. “Could you do that?” It was about seven at night, which is to say, we had come in after a day of drifting around the city (Brooklyn Museum, South Street Seaport, World Trade Center) and we had torn our clothes off and gone straight to bed without stopping for food.
    Generally, we would wander out onto Amsterdam Avenue afterward, starved, and eat dinner in one of the small places in my neighborhood, or bring something back. We had fallen into this routine almost immediately. Occasionally, when I was at work, Mickey would have started to cook something by the time I came home. These were very happy days. Needless to say, Mickey never did spend very much time in Rego Park.
    Which is not to say that in our intense little storm of mutual discovery in those weeks we didn’t find time to talk, to talk about, oh, everything: movies, books, Mickey’s skills and ambitions with fine cabinetry, his love of sailing, my love of art, my work, arguments about the best temperature at which to drink beer, preferences for breeds of dogs, Chinese food, the virtues of sleeping with window shades up or down, Irish politics, stories of childhood adventures, my stories about Pete (with whomhe had chatted cautiously on the telephone a couple of times before they met)—all the usual getting-to-know-you conversations. (Though, as I have said, it emerged later that Mickey, through his mysterious sources, had already gotten to know my particulars.)
    Now, with that deepest evening darkness of late December pressing against the windows, we lay twined together like satiated kittens.
    I eyed him and put my head back down on the bony indentation below his sternum.
    “What do you mean, pick one out? One what? A painting?” I listened to the quiet steady thump of his heart. “There’s one over there,” I said languidly, pointing to the framed poster from the Matisse in Morocco show that hangs on my bedroom wall. “It’s very blue, that painting. Very Moroccan. Very Matisse.” I wasn’t really paying attention yet.
    “What I mean is, on a purely theoretical basis, if I showed you a group of paintings, would you automatically know which one was the best?”
    “Oh, Mickey, of course, sure. You bet. The Patricia Dolan prize for excellence is awarded to … 
this
one.” I reached up and pressed my fingertips to his philtrum, which is perfectly formed, like that of a Raphael angel. His lips parted a little, and I slid my index finger down and slipped it between them. We were like children, always touching, always playing. He welcomed my fingerwith a brief touch from the tip of his tongue, just for an instant, but then he pushed my hand and turned his head away, suddenly serious.
    I tried to answer him more fully.
    “Every art historian of whom you ask that question would say yes, but the real question is, Would any two art historians pick the same painting? People have their biases. And isn’t it ultimately about taste, anyway? It would depend on the art historians, and on the