In the café, James positioned himself so that none of the mirrors caught his bald spot. He had his laptop open, the cursor on the blank space blinking. If terrorism exists, what does it look like? Delete. The earliest known terrorists were the Zealots of Judea. Faced with the prospect of the erosion of their Jewish belief in the hands of an idolatrous Roman—
Faced and hands? Would anyone care about this? Maybe fiction. Maybe a screenplay, about police corruption. He remembered hearing about a local police captain who used to dangle criminals from windows by their ankles. Serpico-ish. Could that be something?
“Wow, you look really serious,” said a figure from above, and James began at the feet, eyes moving up the black boots, tights, the long leather jacket with the coffee in hand. Short, unpainted fingernails curved around its sides.
“Emma,” he said, and she smiled her red-lipped smile. Her hair was in a ponytail, which had the effect of making her look even younger. She didn’t ask to sit but was suddenly next to him. He shut his laptop.
“I read that book you gave me,” she said, taking off her jacket.
“You did?” He shifted his features into something meaningful, hoping to hide the fact that he couldn’t remember what it was.
“What’s going on with you? Everybody said you vanished.”
James decided to ignore the question. “Did you like the book?”
Emma nodded. “I think so. It seemed a little”—she paused—“outdated. ‘The meaning of television.’ I mean, really—television? Does anyone even watch television?”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said James, sipping his Americano. “Wait, you work in television.”
“I’m in digital, remember?”
James nodded and recalled Emma badgering him to blog about his interviews. She had called his footage “content.”
“So what’s up?” she asked again.
He answered like an echoing cave: “What’s up with you?”
“I’m down to part-time. I got a grant to complete my art.”
“What kind of art do you do?” asked James, instantly imagining sculpture involving silicone vaginas or a performance piece where Emma sat atop a pile of rotting meat for days at a time.
“Photography. Okay, third time: What the hell are you up to?” Emma shifted her body closer to him, leaned forward a little. James recognized this as flirtation and flushed accordingly.
Emma smelled like food, mangos or cinnamon, a perfume from an oily antique bottle found at a flea market.
James smiled. “I’m playing dad to a friend’s kid.”
“Single dad?”
James’s smile retreated.
“What? No, I’m married.” There. He’d said it.
“You said, ‘I’m playing dad,’ like it was just about you,” said Emma, sipping coffee through a take-out lid.
“Well, my wife doesn’t play dad. She’s, you know, she’s the mom.” This sounded even worse in tandem with Emma’s remote, blank expression in front of him. “That’s all I meant. Don’t look for subtext, you denizen of the post-post-modern generation.” She laughed, even threw back her head. Bull’s-eye.
“Where’s your friend at, the kid’s real dad?” Why the slightly ghetto vernacular among this generation? James was fairly certain that Emma had gone to a liberal arts college somewhere in the Northeast. Swarthmore?
He considered the question, answered slowly. “The boy, Finn, his father died. His mom’s in the hospital. There was … this accident,” he said, surprised to find the words catch in his throat, surprised because the catch was totally sincere, but also surprised by how well it worked (the old James recognized the panty-loosening effect of this confession, while the present one was proud of himself for being honest with a pretty woman). Emma blinked, put down her coffee, and shook her head: “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said. She looked at him closely, as if anticipating something more. “His daycare’s right over there, so I’m going to pick him up later. I came here to write.”
“How old is he?”
“He’s two. Almost two and a half.” And then James couldn’t stop himself: “He’s a really gentle kid, but I don’t know when it’s going to back up on him. He seems okay, and his teacher said he’s doing well. He knows the alphabet and can count to fifteen, which I looked up online and the number thing, that’s advanced, actually. His dad was an engineer, so maybe that’s why. I didn’t really know Marcus that well, that’s the strangest part of this. I knew Finn’s mom, a long time ago. She dated my roommate, but I barely remember her. She remembered me—”
Emma nodded, frowning. What am I saying? wondered James. What is this?
“Anyhoo,” he said.
Emma looked at her watch, started to put on her coat.
“I live just over there,” she said, pointing across the street to a Portuguese bakery.
“Among the flans?” asked James, with immediate regret. Not funny, not sharp. Emma ignored the awkwardness.
“Above, actually, in the apartment with the green door,” she said, rising, tightening her scarf. “Come by sometime and I’ll show you my pictures. You might like them.” James felt certain that was not true, though he thrilled at the invitation. He tried to imagine Emma’s apartment. Would she have milk crates for furniture, like he did at that age? A futon? Somehow he doubted that kids in their twenties lived like that anymore. He couldn’t smell poverty on them. Their teeth were very white. Emma’s jacket looked as expensive as Ana’s.
She leaned in and gave him a double kiss. He sat very still as she did this, aware that if he so much as moved his head, all bets were off, lips would brush lips, and then what else might touch? He was hungry enough, tired enough of Ana’s trail of gentle pushes and rejections, so tired that he might throw a little tongue in there. And then a whorl moving toward the green door above the flans.
He waved at her through the plate glass window of the café, watching as she was absorbed into the accepting crowd.
Ann Silvan moved slowly through the house, as if she might buy it. Ana and James trailed her, up-selling: “I tightened this railing,” said James. “Just to be safe.” Finn waited at the top of the stairs. “Hellooooo!” he called. Ana noticed that he was barefoot. It felt too cold in the house for barefoot. Would this be marked down on the social worker’s notepad?
Ann Silvan walked slowly around the room that Ana had made for Finn. She glanced out the window at the half-finished yard. She asked how he was sleeping, eating, how much he cried.
“You should probably get a safety rail for the bed,” she said.
“What’s that?” asked James.
“A plastic rail, to prevent tumbling. Any toy store will have one. You just tuck it between the mattress and the frame.”
“I put cushions down at night, in case he rolls out,” said Ana.
“A rail is better,” said Ann Silvan.
Finn jumped up and down on the bed. Ana stared at his bare feet; should she immediately go and fetch socks?
Then Ann Silvan asked: “What time do you get home from work, Ana?”
“Oh, it depends,” said Ana. (When had she felt this naked, this tiny? A job interview? An oral exam? Oh, yes—wheeled into the operating room, looking at the panels on the ceiling. The silence of the nurses with their burka eyes peering over their masks, holding the plastic cap of gas over Ana’s mouth. And what they said they did to her: sliced her stomach open like an envelope and put a tiny camera in there, dropped it down like a periscope to peer around at all the bad news. Yes, thought Ana, this felt a little like that.)
Said Ana: “Right before arbitration, or, you know, a closing, then I stay a bit later.” Ann Silvan looked confused. “But usually six. Earlier if I can.” She was shaving hours off her day the way her mother had shaved years off her age. James cleared his throat.