IT WAS AT THE TOY STORE everyone around here uses that I saw the fellow next. There was nothing exceptional in our meeting there. We both have children; it is the best-stocked store midtown. One is always meeting someone one knows there.
"I'm worried," my friend said. "Please give me your attention. Do I have it?"
"You have it," I said, and stared impressively at the two children whose hands he held.
"That's all right," he said.
"Yes," I said, "but it is not all right with me," at this using my eyes to usher his down to where they would notice the boy whose hand I held.
"Oh," my friend said. "Well, I'll call you."
He called that Monday.
"What's wrong with your kid?" he said.
"I thought you had something to tell me," I said.
"I do," he said, "but I never saw your kid before, and I was just thinking maybe my pal's got his sorrows too."
"Just chicken pox," I said, with my free hand squaring the papers on my desk.
"Takes a while for the scabs to heal, you know. Been through the shit twice with my two, and it can be a bitch, all right."
"Yes," I said.
"You're listening?" he said.
"Absolutely," I said, settling back now for whatever would come.
"I told you I was worried," he said. "Now here's why I'm worried."
No, no, I would never give him what he wanted. "Because you broke it off with her," I said. "And now you're worried that perhaps she's angry — and if she is angry, then maybe she will do something, make trouble — correct?"
"That's it," he said. "That's it exactly. So what do I do?"
"Do something to make her happy," I said. "Then she won't be unhappy."
"But what?" he said. "What could make her happy when she's angry?"
"Something special," I said. "Something uncommonly giving is what I usually recommend."
"You're right," he said, said he hoped my boy's face would soon be without blemish, thanked me for the counsel, and hung up.
THE LANDLORD CLAIMED he was blameless, that he was not responsible for the loss of articles I chose to store outside my door, that if I dared deduct the cost of the sled from my next check in payment of the rent, eviction would ensue. I remarked that the custodian was in the landlord's employ and that logic insisted the employer be held liable for thefts perpetrated by someone acting in performance of his employer's requirements. The landlord said that logic insisted nothing of the kind, that it was not his habit to retain the services of thieves, that his employee was not a thief, and that, moreover, I had no proof of anything underhanded or over-handed and good-bye.
The police said their hands were tied and that the loss, after all, was just a sled. But don't think I did not take down the oaf's badge number, the one who had said just a sled.
As for the custodian, it would appear that the fellow has taken to coming on a weekday.
I am not at home weekdays.
My wife is. And she is afraid, I tell you, afraid.
MY FRIEND CALLED. I was about to leave, and perhaps I was not paying very close attention. Perhaps I should have examined his proposal more carefully. But it was a Wednesday, and Wednesdays I always vacate my office a quarter hour sooner than is otherwise my habit, this to provide time to pick up the laundry before presenting myself at home.
I was courteous enough, I think. I do not think I was especially abrupt. But I expect I was not listening very closely. As a result, I not only failed to hear him well enough to advise him with prudence, but of course I can also have no confidence that I will reproduce his sentences accurately. I believe, however, he said something approximate to this:
"I have the thing, just the thing. A really incredibly good idea, something extraordinary and giving, just as you said. You see, the thing was she was always complaining that I was unreasonably hesitant to let her share in my world, to be with the people I was with, that sort of thing. You know the sort of thing I'm talking about — they do it all the time. I mean, once you're really involved with them, what they invariably want from you is to get really involved with you — hear about your friends, hear about your job, hear about your wife, all the dreariness that you of course don't. It gets that way with them, this pushing at you and pushing at you for more and more of your life. Oh, God, you must have had your own experiences with what I am talking about. Honestly, I really don't think they can help themselves. I mean, they know better, don't they? I mean, they've got to know that if they keep it up, they're going to end up pushing you too far. But they do it and they do it — and you go and do precisely what they don't want, hold back, hold more and more back, until it's yourself you figure you won't hand over to them anymore. The point is, that's exactly why my idea is right on the money. Because the idea I had is to give a party, a sort of going-away party — something that will give her what she wants but end it at the same time. Just me and her and my two closest pals — you and this other pal I have — because I was always telling her about the two of you guys and she was always so terribly interested. It drove me nuts the way she was always asking to meet you two, me always having to invent excuses why she couldn't, these two great buddies I have who happen to be my two best buddies, you and this other buddy of mine."
I think I remember saying, "Please, be sensible, you and I are not precisely on such terms." Or I may have said, "Please, be sensible, that is a vulgar and doomed plan."
I do not know what I said. I know that that night, when I had emptied out my briefcase to sort my papers, I found a notation giving this man's name, a restaurant, a date, a time. I still had this in my hand, amazed, when I went to ball up the laundry wrappings to stuff them in the trash. I don't know why I did not discard the slip of paper along with the rest. You will understand that it was not because I must have said yes to the fellow and was unprepared to go back on my word. Perhaps it was because I had said yes and was bound not to dishonor the queer impetus in me that had made me do it. In any event, I put the reminder in my pocket and the laundry wrappings in the trash basket, lifted out the plastic liner, cinched it, and tossed the whole arrangement down the stairwell for the custodian to find it when he would.
The bastard.
THERE IS CHICKEN POX and there is chicken pox — and my boy had the second kind. We cautioned him not to scratch. Please understand that he is the quality of boy who respects a caution. I know he tried all he could to resist. But a mad itching is a vile thing, and when it is rampantly in its mania, there is nothing left for it but to claw.
He did his best.
I tell my wife the lesions that left scars on his cheeks will prove a trifling matter in the years of his growth.
But she cries. She cries when it would, I think, seem to her that I am asleep.
Of course, it occurs to me to wonder if the scars are why she cries. It could be the loss of the sled that makes her cry. Or the specter of the ungovernable custodian. What kind of creature would take away what belongs to a child?
Or it could be something else she cries about.
HE MUST HAVE GROWN anxious, after all, this fool of ours — because I arrive second, and hear him say he had been sitting and waiting for almost an hour. Yet I was punctual, as is my custom. It was more than clear that he had been drinking for however long he had in fact waited. One would guess that he had come to regret what he had impulsively contrived, and it is to this that I attribute his hurried and avid indulgence.