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A toad by any other name was still Todd Heileman.

Skin care, body building, and hair styling took up where Rock left off. Todd still stood five-foot-eight, but at least he looked good. He could finally net the tall, handsome guys, or at least the ones who either didn’t ask or didn’t mind what he did for a living.

Throughout the past several weeks, however, the tall, handsome guys hadn’t wanted anything to do with him, and any mention of his career only sealed their aversion. If they were seeing what Todd saw in the mirror every day, he could hardly blame them.

Toad had returned, and with a vengeance.

He started cleaning up his work area and cleaning up Mrs. Morgan—suturing her incisions, washing her down with a solution of cool water, antibacterial soap, and bleach, applying solvents to remove any scaling. Gabe would take care of her hair and nails as well as her makeup. He called himself a “restorationist.” And he fully deserved that title.

Todd had never been all that good at applying mortuary makeup, but it was an integral part of preparation. The lack of circulating blood in a body didn’t just pale the skin. It deprived the face of depth and dimension. Visitors at a viewing certainly wouldn’t appreciate an overly expressive face on the guest of honor—nobody wanted to look into a casket and see a Halloween mask leering back at them—but that peacefully-sleeping look required far more skill than most ordinary cosmeticians possessed.

Gabriel had a gift, no doubt about it. Even without a photo to go by, he could color and shade a cold face into a lovely semblance of warmth. His hair styling added a hint of personality. So let him call himself a restorationist. Let him dream up whatever job title he chose.

After washing up, Todd buzzed Larry Bischoff, the funeral director, in the upstairs office. Although a licensed mortician, Larry didn’t have much to do with bodies anymore. He avoided fetching them as well as embalming them. He didn’t mind assisting with preparation work, but he only did so when a complicated case came in or a number of decedents were lined up for treatment. Larry preferred being the public face of Sudbury-Bischoff.

“Mrs. Morgan’s ready,” Todd told him. “Gabe just has to do the cosmetizing.”

“Tell him not to putz with her
too
much, would you?” said Larry in his put-upon voice. “The visitation’s only for four hours and it should be a small one.”

“I can tell him, but that doesn’t mean he’ll listen.”

Larry sighed. “Oh Christ. I appreciate the kid’s talent, but he’s really gotta learn how to pick up the pace. He’s working on dead people, for shit’s sake, not the Sistine Chapel ceiling.”

Todd smiled. Gabriel
was
a kind of mortuary Michelangelo. “Don’t worry about it.

He always manages to get his work done on time.”

“Barely,” Larry said. “Okay, let me know when the artiste is finished, and I’ll help with the dressing and casketing.”

They talked a bit more about how Mrs. Morgan should be lit, since the right lighting did play a role in presentation. Then Todd went to get his perfectionist coworker.

The basement break-room was a simple space with a couch and coffee table, a recliner and end table, an apartment-size refrigerator, and a side table on which a coffee maker and microwave sat. Lamps took the place of fluorescent ceiling lights. Whoever had designed the space had had enough sense to realize the funeral home’s employees needed their own sanctuary, one that was a world apart from the gleaming sterility of the storage and prep rooms as well as the strenuous serenity of the public areas, where Elysian Fields pictures murmured of peace everlasting from cloud-pink walls. The break room was beige and unadorned, clean of false promises, clean of chemicals and the cloying scent of flowers, clean of the accoutrements of mortality.

Gabriel lay on the couch, reading and listening to music on his iPod. “Time for the pretties?” he asked, pulling out his earbuds and sitting up. Then his brow dipped, and he peered at Todd.

“What’s wrong?” Todd backed away a little.

“Those blotches on your skin. They’re darker, rougher.”

“Really?” Todd felt queasy as he hurried over to the room’s one mirror. It didn’t show him any difference in his appearance.

To
his
eyes, in fact, the rash hadn’t changed at all in the past month. Fallon and Jake had said the same about theirs. The blots had simply appeared one morning, like patches of wildfire on his face and neck and forearms. They never got better, never got worse.

Gabriel, on the other hand, could barely see the rash at first. When it became more obvious to him, which was sometime last week, he claimed the redness wasn’t any worse than “an old whore’s blush.”

Todd faced his coworker, who still stood beside the couch. “You mean they’re worse than when you first got here today?”

“Yeah.” Gabriel’s curious, concerned gaze moved over Todd’s face and arms.

“Maybe it’s the chemicals, not the latex. Did your doctor mention that possibility?”

Todd distractedly shook his head. The point was moot, since his doctor could neither see nor feel even the slightest hint of any abnormality. And then there was the fact that Fallon and Jake, who never came near embalming solutions, had the same condition.

“How bad is it?” Todd asked, lightly touching an afflicted area on his cheek.

“You should be able to tell. You just looked.”

“I know, but…”
I’m probably not seeing what you’re seeing
. “I just want an honest opinion. Is it really disgusting? I mean, disgusting enough to make people cringe when I’m near them?”

Gabe approached him. He looked into Todd’s eyes, not at his damaged skin. Then he slowly ran his fingertips along Todd’s right forearm. “I can’t speak for other people. But it doesn’t bother
me
.”

The unflinching glide of his hand was more a caress than an analytical touch. Todd quivered inside. “You wouldn’t be afraid of…” He couldn’t say it, didn’t want to acknowledge what he was thinking and feeling by giving it words.

“I wouldn’t be afraid,” Gabe said quietly. His hand fell away from Todd’s arm.

Todd cleared his throat. “Well, maybe we
should
go on a date.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.” Todd uttered a tense laugh. “Nobody’s wanted to touch me in a month.” The mere prospect of sex after his period of forced celibacy made Todd squirmy in the groin.

Gabe’s face fell. He watched Todd a few beats longer—studied him, actually—then said, “Maybe we shouldn’t after all.”

The abrupt one-eighty set Todd back on his heels. “Uh…I don’t get it.”

“You will. Ask me again when you do.”

“What? Gabriel, you’ve been inviting me out nearly every week since you started working here.”

“Exactly,” said Gabe. “And I’ve been turned down nearly every week since I started working here.”

The heat that flashed through Todd’s face didn’t come from his rash. “I had reasons for—”

Apparently not through with his indictment, Gabe broke in. “Tell me something.

Have you scored at all since you started looking like a tanning salon disaster?”

His question, and especially his blunt description, made Todd wilt from the inside out. Embarrassment seared his tentative hope. “What difference does it make?”

“
All
the difference. If you haven’t scored, it explains why you’re suddenly interested in me.”

Gabriel didn’t look or sound angry. Although his words implied indignation, his face and voice conveyed a quiet self-possession steeled with pride. Todd felt like a jerk.

“I don’t fault you for wanting some sexual healing,” Gabe said, more like his mild-mannered self again, “but I can’t give it to you.” His mouth slipped briefly into a regretful smile before he headed for the door.

“Why?” Todd asked abruptly. He sounded pitiful…but not, he realized, because of his desperation. He felt no desperation. This wasn’t the only time in his life he’d gone for weeks without getting laid. Some other feeling had put that tone in his voice.

Gabe lowered his head and seemed to address the doorknob. “Because once your condition clears up, I’ll be forced to realize I was your last resort. And being someone’s last resort is never an honor. Don’t you know that?” He opened the door.

“Gabriel!”

He paused, turned.

Todd had trouble meeting his gaze. “I like you. I do.”

“Right now,” Gabe said with a rueful smile. “That isn’t enough.”

When David walked in, Jake didn’t hug him. They always greeted each other with a brief, friendly hug—and often said good-bye with a fast, furious fuck—but Jake was feeling too self-conscious about his dreadfully diseased skin to get close to anybody, even his favorite casual lay.

“You seem preoccupied today,” David said without approaching him. A bright man, David apparently took his cue from Jake’s body language. He stopped and stood in the middle of the sunny office, a large manila envelope tucked beneath his left arm.

Jake turned from the window and rested his butt on the sill. “A little, I guess.”

David smiled. He had a curiously comforting smile. “I suppose that comes with being a high-powered agent.”

“Having an office in New York City comes with being a high-powered agent.

Having an office on the Square comes with being a medium-powered agent. Having an office in Brookside Professional Park”—Jake inclined his head toward the long window at his back, beyond which lay a scrubby five acres of suburban woods—"comes with being…” He almost said,
Jake Pelletier, wannabe
, but it sounded self-pitying.

“Hey, I like it,” David said with quiet good cheer. “It’s a lot more pleasant than a pretentious suite in some high-rise.” He was being reassuring in his understated way. It was something he did often…and so subtly, Jake never realized until after the fact that David had managed to boost his flagging spirits.

This was only the second time they’d gotten together in the past month. David lived nearly forty miles outside the city, so it was more convenient for them to stay in touch via phone and e-mail. Besides, publishers weren’t exactly screaming for David Ocho’s work.

Still, Jake liked seeing him. Valued his company, actually. Not because David was a knockout—from his average height to his average hair, David couldn’t hold a candle to the men Jake hooked up with—but he was, oddly enough, a welcome diversion from those men. David and Jake actually talked more than they fucked, even though the fucking
was
pretty damned good.

“You still seem distant,” David said. “Would you rather I left?”

“No, of course not.” Jake went to his desk and sat down. How like David to be considerate, even at his own expense.

“There are other things I can do in town. It wouldn’t be a wasted trip.”

“David, quit being so goddamned selfless and have a seat.”

He continued to stand. The thin wash of early spring sunlight drew soft streaks of persimmon from his dark brown hair and made his eyes a shade more green than brown.

“I’m not being selfless. I just don’t like dealing with somebody, anybody, whose mind is elsewhere.”

“My mind is here.”

“We’ll see.” David tossed the manila envelope onto Jake’s desk. It landed half on an open appointment book and half on a manuscript checkered with Post-It notes.

“What’s this?” Jake asked. He snatched up a pen before it rolled to the floor.

“The story you suggested I write.” David finally sat.

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic about it.”

David shrugged. His suede jacket was open, as were the top two buttons of the knit shirt beneath it. He had a nice body, slender and firm. It wasn’t muscled up, but Jake liked the feel of its sleek contours beneath his hands whenever they got into a clutch. He liked even more what David was capable of doing with that body.

When Jake realized he was staring over his glasses, he abruptly looked down at the envelope. “Don’t be resentful. A lot of writers have had to pad their incomes with magazine work. It gets noticed, too.” He hazarded another glance over his glasses. “You could be the next Annie Proulx.”

“I could also be the next Poe or Fitzgerald and die broke and despondent.”

Jake smiled. “Don’t forget alcoholic.” His gaze met David’s for an instant.

Discomfited, he turned his attention back to the envelope and began opening it.

“Fitzgerald made good money in Hollywood. Maybe you should start writing screenplays.”

“And have an affair with a gossip columnist.” David reached across the desk and pulled the envelope out of Jake’s hands. “Don’t read that now.”

“Why? It won’t take me long.”

“Yes it will. Read it at home, okay?”

Jake took the envelope back from David but didn’t dig into it. “Now it’s my turn to wonder what’s up with
you
.”

“Nothing’s up with me. What happened to your contacts?”

Jake had four pairs of tinted contact lenses. David, Todd, and Fallon teased him mercilessly about this particular indulgence of his ego. “No creature outside the reptile kingdom has eyes that green,” Fallon had once told him. Yet Jake clung to his multicolored eyewear, since it served him particularly well when he went out to net some action. Most guys couldn’t tell they were gazing at dye rather than a bewitching pair of irises.

“This…shit on my face makes them uncomfortable to wear,” Jake said. A touch of the inflammation was on his eyelids.

David, elbow on chair arm, ran a forefinger over his upper lip while he regarded Jake. “You’re still convinced your skin is messed up?”

“How can I
not
be convinced? I have to look at it every day in the mirror, David.

Can’t you see it yet?”

David straightened and turned up his hands. “I only see what I saw the last time—

something like a mild windburn. It might be a little redder today, but I still wouldn’t have given it a second thought if you hadn’t drawn my attention to it.”

Jake tossed his eyeglasses aside and scratched at his hairline. That sick feeling worried his stomach again. “Most people don’t see it at all. Not even the faint redness
you’ve
picked up on.”