Excerpt from My Dream of You by Nuala O'Faolain, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Jimmy wasn't answering his mobile. It occurred to me that he was in New York. I sent him an e-mail.

I need to talk to you, Jimmy, it said. I think I've had it with TravelWrite. I'm getting old, sweetheart. The good has gone out of the job.

I sent another one half a minute later.

Not just out of the job, Jimmy - the good has gone out of me.

Jimmy had been at the Mercer but he'd checked out. When I finally got to talk to him he said the place was so fashionably young that it made him feel old. He was coming back a roundabout route via Miami but we arranged to get together after work a few days later in a winebar near the office - a place that had once been a cavernous Victorian pub and now had a split personality, with mean little chrome chairs that looked all wrong in the heavy pitch-pine booths. I thought, watching Jimmy go up to the bar, about him saying that he felt old. When he was so slender and vivid! Had I ever really tried to understand the ways in which a gay man's ageing might hurt differently from my own? The boy in fake Prada behind the counter was laughing up at him. Everyone liked Jim because he had an open face and a quiff of straw-colored hair, just like Tintin's. Of course, he didn't want to look like Tintin - he wanted to look like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.

I think you are looking a bit Dean-ish this evening, I said to him when we were settled. Those narrow, hot eyes, you know? Eyelids bruised from nights of excess?

Jet lag, he said. And what has you being so nice to me, Dame Freya darling? If this is a symptom of your midlife crisis, I hope you're going to go on having it.

What were you doing in Miami, dearest Mr. Chatwin? I said. You were hardly there for the fine wines.

You can't get a decent bottle of Sancerre south of the Mason-Dixon line, Jimmy said. Or even a good Chinese meal.

The best Chinese food in the world is in Seattle, I said, where the Chinese draughtsmen from Boeing open restaurants with their severance pay. They've got American raw materials there. That's what Chinese food needs.

You know the problem with Seattle? Jimmy said. It's too far away.

It's only too far away if you start from here.

I disagree, he said seriously. There are some places that are too far away, even when you're in them. Seattle is one.

We talked this kind of nonsense a lot of the time. Roxy said it drove her crazy. But after twenty years together, Jimmy and I didn't listen to ourselves. We told each other everything through smiles or frowns or whether we cut a date short or lingered, or whether we looked down at the table or into each other's eyes, or whether we took a sip of the wine with gusto or flatly. Once, when I was upset at a meeting, Jimmy said, What's up, love? and Alex got really cross.

How do you know there's something up with her? he said, frustrated. How? The two of you always seem much the same to me.

There were ways in which we did acknowledge, in the winebar, that something was happening but that we had confidence in each other and would deal with it in time. That Jim ordered a bottle of wine, for example, instead of starting with a glass each, said to me that if I insisted on having a serious talk, he was there for me. And my mock-petulance when we were hugging goodbye told him that I wasn't going to be difficult about whatever he was up to in Miami.

Why can't I have a rendezvous with you? I said. Why can't I lie on a mattress in the pool of the Delano while a hunky waiter brings me a Cuba Libre and a slice of key lime pie?

Later, sweetie, Jimmy said. When we're old we'll move to South Beach for our arthritis.

I'll be jealous of all your geriatric rough trade, I said, rubbing his springy hair. That was the last time I ever touched him.

There'll be no rough trade left, he said. The boys will all be dead.

Reprinted from My Dream of You by Nuala O'Faolain by permission of Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 2000 Nuala O'Faolain. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.