The Ask

Twenty-one

We ate dinner in silence, or near silence, as Bernie, naked, wet from the bath, speared disks of Not Dog with his fork and chuckled knowingly at something he most likely knew nothing about. Maura kept her eyes down, sipped her wine. I pretended to relish my Swedish meatballs, which I'd picked up with some other groceries after leaving Paul and Maura in the park.

It had been nothing but pleasantries among us, but the flustered way they had gathered themselves after Bernie called to them charged our exchange. Paul had tried to excuse himself but Maura insisted he stay. They could walk back to the office together. Lunch hour was over anyway. Why hadn't I called? Maura wanted to know. I told her about Happy Salamander, the defection of the Newts. But why hadn't I called? Paul looked shaken, though still wonderfully tan. He promised Bernie he'd finish his animation soon, led Maura away.

"Paul's my grown-up friend," said Bernie.

"What about me?"

But I'm not sure he heard. He'd already darted away, disappeared into a throng of Russian tourists, then just disappeared.

"Bernie!" I dipped into that familiar parental trot, the one that covers more ground than walking but does not yet reek of pure panic. It's important to smile a lot while you maintain a steady pace and call out your child's name in an almost jovial manner, as though it could be a game, and even if it's not a game, you still aren't worried, it's happened before, though not too often, and besides, it's age appropriate, so you don't consider it an issue requiring therapy or, heaven help us, a pharmaceutical regimen. This is no big deal, the trot and the smile signal, though it sure would be great to locate the little scamp. But hey, the kid gives back a lot of love, and usually you're a bit more in control of the situation, though you understand child-rearing throws its curve-balls, its cutters and sinkers, too, but still, this is nothing compared to the hard work the parents of, for example, Down kids must put in, or even the folks with autistic children, where you're doing all that special needs slogging and not even getting those sloppy Down kisses, no, your kid, he's a regular kid, maybe with some impulse-control deficiencies, or dealies, as you laughingly call them with your wife, or maybe, and you're definitely willing to entertain this notion, especially in this era of so much entitled helicopter coddling, or whatever the term is where the children are literally enfolded in cocoons of helicopters that entitle them to do whatever they want, because of the culture, maybe this very normal, regular, active boy, who happens to live in a social strata that condemns masculine energies in all its children, maybe he just needs to have his coat pulled, to be briefed, as it were, in an energetic masculine way, to be boxed or cuffed or whacked upside some part of him in that no-nonsense, simple folkways folk way (because throttling and such, it's worked for thousands of years, no?), or at least persuaded in a compelling and lasting fashion that it is not okay to just dash off into a throng of Russian (gas-rich, reassembling their rabid empire) tourists and ignore his father's cries, yes, it could be that he needs to be squared away on that score in a more visceral sense, though certainly not in the sense of a spanking or a hiding, such tactics, alas, never work, but anyway that is a separate discussion. Really, right now, you just need to get a visual on the little shit, pronto.

After the trot comes the flat-out run, all heaves and stumbles, the smile long vanished, but it never came to that, because I found Bernie, or he found me, his wrist in the grip of a stout woman in a business suit.

"Yours?"

"Bernie," I said. "You are in big trouble. Thanks."

"No worries," said the woman. "He was just chasing a pigeon."

"Thanks again. I really appreciate it."

"I've got three at home."

"Pigeons?"

"No, kids. Here."

She handed me Bernie's wrist.

"He's a fast one. But I know how to sneak up on them."

"I owe you," I said, dragged Bernie away.

We stood behind a tree near the edge of the park.

"What are you doing, Daddy?"

"I think I'm going to cry," I said.

"Don't do that," said Bernie.

"Okay," I said, picked up him up, laid my cheek on his shoulder.

"Bernie," I said. "I love you so much."

"That's nice, Daddy."

"Yes," I said. "It is nice."

"You want to know something else nice?"

"I sure do, Bernie."

"I love mommy's friend Paul. Do you think Paul loves me, Daddy?"

They weren't like dolls, because dolls had no feelings. Kids had feelings, just not any remotely related to yours.

Now we sat at dinner saying nothing. Some families did this every night. Hollywood made poignant movies about them. But we'd always been blabbermouths.

Bernie chuckled again.

"What's so funny?" I said.

He looked up at me with odd fervency. He was holding his miniature half-on between his fingers, thwacking it against the chair seat.

"Daddy," he said.

"Yes, Bern."

"This isn't a winky."

"It's not?"

"It's a video game."

I looked down at my son's lap. An odd benevolence surged through me. I had maybe made peace with Bernie's foreskin. His freak flap, let it fly. If he ever wanted to be a real Jew he could have it snipped. Nobody would ever be able to question his commitment after that. Besides, if he wanted to be a real Jew, he'd probably have to renounce me. Because I was a fake Jew who spent a lot of time on the fake internet rubbing my video game. Because the real Jews scared the hell out of me, same as the real Muslims and the real Christians, the real Hindus. Because they believed. How could they believe? Fine, come kill me as a Jew, flog me to death in a desert quarry, bayonet me in the Pale, gas me in your Polish camp, behead me on your camcorder, I still would not believe. To me that was the true test of courage: to not submit to the faith they assume you possess and will kill you for. So now I loved Bernie's foreskin. Or at least I'd made peace with it.

"I've made peace with it," I whispered.

"Excuse me?" said Maura.

"I said I've made peace with it."

"That was quick."

"What do you mean?"

"Wait a minute," said Maura. "What have you made peace with?"

"You tell me."

"Not so fast."

"What do you think I've made peace with?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

"You tell me," I said.

"I think we're going around in a circle."

"Which means what?"

"What do you mean which means what?"

"It could mean there is something you don't want to tell me."

"No, Milo, it's you who won't do the telling. Don't you see? You won't tell me what you've made peace with. So, I can't tell you what I don't want to tell you until I know what it is that you've made peace with."

"I'm no longer at peace."

"Good. You probably shouldn't be."

This is how I knew my wife was having an affair with Paul. The knowledge arrived with a pressured sensation, a pallet of wood on my chest. Deck wood. For a Mission-style deck. I stood, moved to the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to get some air."

"Daddy, will you get me some?"

"Air?"

"Yeah."

"I'll try, Bern."

"You can't go out now," said Maura.

It was true. We had the evening ritual ahead of us-the dishes, Bernie's books, his teethbrushing, his pre-tuck-in piss, which often required some degree of cajolement, his stories, his songs. It would be a kind of betrayal of the ideals of co-parenting to walk out now. Then again, sliding your tongue along the seam of Paul the Animator's smooth and perfumed scrotum had to hold formidable rank in the hierarchies of betrayal. Maybe someday a civil court judge would sort through the equivalencies. Most of me hoped not.

"I need some air," I said.

A walk around the block convinced me I could not return home tonight.

I headed for the doughnut shop. I wanted doughnut-scented air. My pain had earned me both a Bavarian cream and a coconut chocolate flake. I was the only customer and I sat and ate my doughnuts, pictured myself that lonely diner at the counter in the famous painting. I'd always studied it from the artist's perspective, the stark play of shadow and light. But to be the fucker on the stool was another kind of stark entirely.

Now the door opened and the kiddie-diddler, his herringbone blazer twined shut with twists of electrical tape, wheeled a plaid suitcase into the shop.

"Good evening, Predrag," he said in that radio voice.

The counter kid nodded.

The kiddie-diddler sidled up, tapped a finger on the napkin dispenser. Predrag slid the old man coffee in a paper cup.

"Predrag, my strapping friend, what are the specials tonight?"

"No specials. Doughnuts."

"What about those croissant sandwiches? With the eggs and sausage?"

"What about them?"

"I'm in the mood for one of those delectable concoctions."

"Microwave's broken."

"Yes?"

"They're frozen. You need a microwave."

"Surely you have a conventional oven back there," said the kiddie-diddler.

"These are for the microwave only."

"I'd be surprised if you couldn't defrost them in a conventional oven. You know, Predrag, and I grant that you may be too young to remember this, but there was a time before the microwave. A better time, some would argue, though I wouldn't. That would be silly. No time is better than another time. It's preposterous. There are always people doing kindnesses and there are always people smearing each other into the earth. To think otherwise is foolish. But I dare say it's not so foolish to suppose one could circumvent the problem of the broken microwave and heat the croissant sandwich in the conventional oven, probably to better overall effect. What say you, my Serbian prince? Couldn't be that much of a hardship, could it? Not compared to the Battle of the Blackbirds, I'd wager. What say you, son?"

"I say you don't have any money to buy a croissant, you old queer. Not a dime."

"The Slavs are a brainy lot," said the kiddie-diddler, swiveled toward me on his stool. "Absolutely crazy, as history bears out, but very smart, very courageous, marvelous poets, and also fine logicians."

"The fuck you talking about?" said Predrag.

"Any coarsening effect, as witnessed here, can be blamed on the West, I assure you. What's good in them comes from their Oriental influences, a notion they detest, but understand in their hearts to be the truth."

"Here," said Predrag, threw a frozen croissant in its wrapper at the kiddie-diddler. The old man ripped it open, sucked on the crystals.

"That's right," said Predrag. "Now give me five dollars."

The kiddie-diddler lowered his pastry.

"Young man, you know I never carry that kind of cash around."

"Damn it," said Predrag. "Do I have to call Tommy?"

"No," said the old man, looked at me again. "We won't have to call Thomas, will we?"

"Excuse me?" I said.

"Sir, I recognize you as a man of this neighborhood. A frequenter of this counter. Surely you could find it in your heart to advance the cost of this sandwich. I am good for it."

"Right," said Predrag.

"I am!" said the kiddie-diddler. "Is there no dignity allowed an old man?"

I threw five dollars on the counter. The kiddie-diddler rose, fixed me with his runny blue eyes.

"Sir, so that I may promptly repay you, with interest, may I enquire as to where you reside?"

"In a fabulous and secret universe of the mind."

The diddler blinked, smiled, patted my arm.

"Lifelong resident myself," he said, walked out.

"Jesus," said Predrag. "Every day with that old homo. I hate him."

"Because of the kids?" I said.

"What kids?"

"I don't know."

"Don't be spreading shit like that," said Predrag. "People get their throats cut, you start talking like that. He never hurt anybody. He's a good man. I just hate him. That's all. He gets in the way of my lie. My lie for myself."

"Your lie?"

"That in America, things can be okay."

"Why do you let him back?" I asked.

"It's his store."

"His store?"

"Well, was. Till he went nuts. Now his brother Tommy runs it. Not a very nice guy, Tommy. Lets his brother roam the streets. That's not America."

"Actually, that is America," I said.

"True," said Predrag, "but I don't want to hear it."

He had his tongs up, somewhat martially.

Out in the night again, below the N tracks, I still didn't want to go home. To slink back into the apartment, yank a blanket around my shoulders on the sofa, it seemed a kind of death.

It was too late for Claudia's house in New Jersey. A hotel in Manhattan would be ruinous. To call Purdy stood for another kind of undoing. It would be a mistake to owe him any more than I did. I still hadn't touched the money in the envelope.

Don Charboneau lived the closest, but he and Sasha just had the one room. I couldn't picture us in a group spoon. Maybe it was time to look into that Cypriot let. Still, I needed a place for tonight. Horace bunked with his mother in Armonk. Or had he not mentioned something about some roommates, a new place in Bushwick?

I called him, was at his door in Brooklyn in an hour.

"Milo," said Horace, shirtless, in dirty corduroys. "Welcome to the coop."

He scratched at his chest, led me into his new home.

Horace lived in a huge room filled with cages. Inside each cage was a young person, a futon or cot, a footlocker, a few milk crates. Bare bulbs on wires hung from fixtures in the high ceiling. I'd read about these places. Kids moved to the city, but there were no apartments left to rent to them, or none they could afford. But on a starting salary, or no salary, you could maybe manage a cage. Several dozen people resided here among the drum kits and guitar amps, the antique film editing deck, a few long tables and spindly chairs, a minifridge. Power cables streaked the floor under mounds of black and silver tape. Laptops glowed from the cages. Voices rose and fell, rippled about the room, a dozen conversations going at once, or maybe one conversation replicated over and over by feral and beautiful children.

The place resembled a new model prison, or one that had achieved a provisional utopia after principled revolt, or maybe a homeless shelter for people with liberal arts degrees. The cages brought to mind those labs with their death-fuming vents near my college studio. These kids were part of some great experiment. It was maybe the same one in which I'd once been a subject. Unlike me, though, or the guinea pigs and hares, they were happy, or seemed happy, or were blogging about how they seemed happy.

Horace had a sleeping bag in his cage, a desktop computer on an upturned box. The floor was cold concrete. A net sack of VHS cassettes dangled from the ceiling, maybe to honor the ancients, their antediluvian delivery systems. Underneath stood a stack of office files, the familiar hunter green tabs. He was taking work home, to his cage. He was a stronger, more adaptable kind of human.

"Miss Armonk?" I said.

"Thanks," said Horace, "but I'm not that pretty."

"No, I mean-"

"I know what you mean. Yeah, sometimes. I mean I miss my mom. The home-nuked meals. We had a lot of laughs. And she has a good hash connection. But my dad thought it was time for me to venture out into the world. Here's the world. You can crash out on the sleeping bag. Not in it. That would be a little gross. Just on it. I've got band practice."

Horace stood, stepped out of the cage. He fastened a padlock to the door.

"Locking me in?" I said.

"Trust me," he said. "It's better this way. They don't do the most rigorous vetting of tenants around here. Most of the kids are cool. But this place can be a creep con, too."

"What if I have to take a leak?"

"There's a jug over there in the corner. Okay?"

"Okay. And thanks."

"Hey, we're on the same team, right?"

"What team is that?"

Horace walked off, joined a few others near the rehearsal platform. He hoisted himself up behind the drums, laid down some lazy paradiddles. A gaunt woman with a constellation of face studs and a coonskin cap fingered a fuzz-toned bass. A bald guy with a microphone duct-taped to his throat dropped for some push-ups. His grunts and a few hard burps roared through the PA. The bass player looked over at the blinking soundboard near the drums.

"Wait!" she called. "We should be recording this!"

They got loud and I got weary. I had worried they would keep me awake but they functioned like the noise machine Maura brought home a few years ago, the one that blasted the crush of waterfalls while we slept, or did until we produced our own noise machine, one with the opposite function, shoved the store-bought model in a closet with our racquetball gear and my home gravlax kit. I fell asleep as the throat-miked youngster gargled schnapps and Horace bashed away on his snare and the girl plucked a two-note bass line much like the two-note bass line I used to pluck back when I also believed it was more authentic if you could not play your instrument whatsoever.

That night I dreamed I was an indentured servant in colonial Philadelphia. Somehow, even in the dream, I sensed that I had once been a development officer in post-colonial New York City, but couldn't be certain. I wore a leather apron with pouches filled with tools, pliers and awls, heavy iron files. My workbench was heaped with broken video games. I had no idea how to fix them, but I knew my master would not let me sleep or eat until I had. Jaw clenched to stanch my sobs, I jabbed a bellows up against the exposed logic board of a console, pumped.

A summer storm whipped the elms outside the workshop window. I heard a knock on the door and a round-shouldered young man with bright gray eyes leaned into the room.

"Ben," I said.

"I came to see if you needed any help, Milo. I know these contraptions tend to bedevil you."

"I'm fine, Ben."

"Truly, Milo, I am here to offer any advice you require. I have been thinking much on the subject of induction. And I feel I owe you after the incident last week in the tavern. I never knew you possessed any Hebraic blood."

"I never knew you were an anti-Semite," I said.

"Well, we do not have that term yet, but I am chancing that you refer to the prophecy I allegedly deliver at the Constitutional Convention sixty years from now? About how the Jews are insidious Asiatics we must protect against? That was a forgery. Everybody knows that."

"But what about the stuff you said at the tavern last week?"

"I just apologized for that."

"Ben," I said, "get the fuck out of here."

"Please, Milo, forgive me. Not for my sake, but for yours. You must relieve yourself of the burdens of resentment. Such an amelioration of the soul will enliven you. I am loath to see you toil with such futility."

"Sorry it's so painful to watch."

"I just don't understand it, my good friend. I left school at ten but have applied myself assiduously to learning and life. I will refrain from reciting my present and future accomplishments. You can look them up on ye olde webnet."

"I hate that joke. Both of those jokes."

"To each his own," said Ben.

"You made a slave hold the kite."

"Pardon?"

"I read that somewhere. You made a slave hold the kite and then the lightning struck and he got hit."

"Kite? Lightning? I fear I am ignorant of this calumny. But, yet, you may have something there. As I mentioned, I have been cogitating upon certain electrical properties, as found in nature. Kite, you say?"

"Come off it, Ben. You fucking hustler."

"And what, pray tell, are you, Mister Burke?"

"You know what I am, Ben. I'm a piece of shit. A man with many privileges and zero skills. What used to be called an American."

"Not my kind of American. Fare thee well, Mister Burke. Good luck with that GameCube."

Young Ben Franklin slammed the door shut after him. My master's lucky horseshoe fell from its nail, clattered to the stone floor.

I woke with my cheek pressed into the cage wire. The bass player's porous face, scabbed and splotched at the sites of her various impalings, bobbed inches from mine. She knelt on the stone floor in the next cage over. Horace thrust away behind her. I'd once heard him refer to this position, on the phone with his mother, as "the style of the doggie." Of course, he might have been in her ass. I had no way of knowing from my vantage. It was a phenomenological quandary. Either way he pushed into her, and the girl's face drew up to my tiny patch of world. Our eyes locked. Her sour breath jetted through the wires. I stuck my pinky through the cage, uncertain of the nature of my ask. A suck? A nibble? She seemed to know, precisely, shook her head. I shrugged, rolled over, stood. The place had quieted down. Kids huddled in clots. Some swayed on their haunches around laptop screens. The boy with the throat mike snored on the drum riser, his aural emissions now less tropical waterfall and more the creak of a splitting ice cap, or some ur-continent's ancient riving.