“Is Julia in?” the visitor asked as casually as if he were an old friend. Alex held back his answer. “Julia?” he repeated, as if he had never heard the name before. “Julia Stein,” the visitor explained. “Is she in?” Alex tried to think of a lie that would allow him to turn the visitor away. Instead he came up with a stuttering reply. “Yeah, I think so. I’m not sure. I’ll see. Well, yeah, she’s here.” Boys may register beauty in one another, but they learn early in life never to say so, never to pretend they care. Beauty is an attribute of girls. Boys mention it to girls when they’re making out. That was the rule as Alex understood it. A boy who notices beauty in another boy had better take care. As for a boy whose face mirrors feminine delicacy, what could be more unsettling? Yet Alex was all but struck speechless by the boy he saw before him. Flesh that fairly glowed, a face that might have been a painted angel’s, alluring eyes that studied him calmly as if from some privileged height.
