We talked about the intervening years. After his mother died, he had gone to live with an aunt. He didn’t finish high school. He backpacked around Mexico, and then he helped to organize a copper miners’ union in Chile, and after that he had taught English in Ecuador before returning to America. He met Julian, his best friend, while hiking the Presidential mountain range in New Hampshire (they had met on Madison and started talking on Jefferson, and by the time they had done the Washington traverse, they were inseparable). Days before I’d moved to Cambridge, Jules had convinced Cyrus to move into his house, just streets away from my dorm. By now I was over being shy; I decided it would be best to just tell him.