What I Loved

was under the impression that he was spending the night with one of his classmates in Princeton. When Mark arrived that afternoon, Bill telephoned and asked me to come upstairs.
    Mark stared at his knees while Bill and Violet questioned him about lying. He claimed it was all "a mix-up." He hadn't lied. He thought he was going over to Jake's house, but then Jake decided to go to New York to see a friend, and he went with him. Where was Jake last night, then? Bill wanted to know. Leo hadn't seen Jake in the hallway. Mark said that Jake had gone off with some other people. Bill told Mark that lying undermined trust and that he had to stop. Mark vehemently denied that he had lied. Everything he had said was true. Then Violet mentioned drugs.
    "I'm not stupid," Mark said. "I know drugs screw you up. I saw a documentary on heroin once, and it really freaked me out. I'm just not into that."
    "Teenie was high last night," I said, "and that pale fellow was shaking like a leaf."
    "Just because Teenie's messed up doesn't mean I am." Mark looked directly at me. "Teddy shakes because it's part of his act. He's an artist."
    "Teddy who?" Bill said.
    "Teddy Giles, Dad. You must have heard of him. He does performances and sells these really cool sculptures. He's been written about in lots of magazines and everything."
    When I looked at Bill, I thought I saw a flicker of recognition pass across his face, but he made no comment.
    "How old is Giles?" I asked.
    "Twentv-one," Mark said.
    Violet said, "Why were you trying to get into Leo's apartment?"
    "I wasn't!" Mark sounded desperate.
    "I heard the lock turn, Mark," I said.
    "No! That was Teddy. He didn't have a key. He turned the doorknob because he thought it was our apartment upstairs."
    I looked Mark directly in the eyes and he looked back at me. "You didn't use my key last night?"
    "No," he said. There was no hesitation in him.
    "What did you want in our apartment, then?" Violet said. "You didn't come home until an hour ago."
    "I wanted my camera to take pictures."
    Bill rubbed his face. "For the rest of the month, you'll stay put while you're here."
    Mark's jaw fell open in disbelief. "But what did I do?"
    Bill sounded tired. "Listen, even if you hadn't lied to me and to your mother, you need to do your schoolwork. You'll never graduate if you don't start studying. Also," he said, "I want you to return Leo's key."
    Mark stuck out his bottom lip and pouted. The expression on his soft young face reminded me of a disgruntled two-year-old who had just been told that another bowl of ice cream wasn't forthcoming. At that moment his head with its infantile features and his long, growing body seemed to be at odds with each other, as if the top of him hadn't caught up with the bottom.
    I asked Mark about Teddy Giles the following Saturday afternoon when he came to see me. Despite the fact that he was grounded, I didn't notice any change in Mark's mood. I did notice that he had dyed his hair green, but I decided not to say anything about it.
    "How's your friend Giles?" I said.
    "He's fine."
    "You said he was an artist?"
    "He is. He's famous."
    "Is he?"
    "At least with kids. But he's got a gallery now and everything."
    "What's the work like?"
    Mark leaned against the wall in the hallway and yawned. "It's cool. He cuts things up."
    "What things?"
    "It's hard to explain." Mark smiled to himself.
    "Last week you said that he was shaking because it was part of his act. I didn't understand that."
    "He's into looking frail."
    "And the little boy? Who was he?"
    "Me?"
    "No, not you. You're not a little boy, are you?"
    Mark laughed. "No, that's his name, Me."
    "Is it an Asian or Indian name?" I said.
    "No, it's M-E, like 'me.' I'm 'me.' "
    "His parents gave him a first-person pronoun for a name?"
    "Nah," Mark said. "He changed it. Everybody just calls him Me."
    "He looks about twelve," I said.
    "He's nineteen."
    "Nineteen?"
    "Is he Giles's lover?" I asked pointedly.
    "Wow," Mark said. "I didn't expect you to ask me something like that, but no, they're just friends. If you really want to know, Teddy's bi, not gay."
    Mark studied me for a moment before he continued. "Teddy's brilliant. Everybody admires him. He grew up really poor in Virginia. His mother was a prostitute, and he didn't know who his dad was. When he was fourteen, he ran away from home and wandered around the country for a while. Then he came to New York and started working as a busboy at the Odeon. After that, he got into