halfway,” and goes upstairs and in the dining room they say “So?…yes?” and he suggests Battleship and they say they hate it and he says “It’s something I loved as a kid and your grandma’s taught you and given you plenty of graph paper for and you’ve played it with her, but all right…how about Scrabble?” and Margo says “If we have to do something like that, since you’re forcing us, okay,” and he says “I’m not forcing, but let’s do it,” and has another glass of wine while he plays and in about half an hour says “So, what d’ya know, the old brain’s lost again. Almost bedtime, kids, anyone want to call Mommy? — number’s on the fridge door. You call and I’ll put away the game, for it’ll take too long for you two to duel it out to the end,” and Julie calls, speaks to Lee and then Margo gets on and both tell her how boring, dull, long and monotonous the day’s been and how Daddy’s so unfair not letting them watch TV after such a terrible day and Margo must have mentioned Scrabble and Lee must have said she thought it a good idea to play it because now Margo says “It was his, we didn’t want to. He said we should learn new words and use our minds more and I already get thirty vocabulary words a week at school and all the ones we used on the board weren’t new to Julie or me, though he explained them like they were. And I use my mind all the time in reading and making things and thinking and I’m sure he let us win because he saw how bored we were playing it with him,” and then “I know, ‘he’ is ‘Daddy,’ but what of it? Our teacher says we’re supposed to use the pronoun more in writing and speech,” and then “Mommy wants to speak to you,” and he gets on and Lee says “So how’d it go?” and he says “Home, fine; despite what the kids say, I think we’ve had fun and I got a good dinner without milk in them and I’ll probably get them in bed on time. But oh boy, the trip. Listen, I’ll be honest, we nearly got hit twice on the road. Once wasn’t my fault — two bozos who in fact I later saw at a Roy Rogers at a rest stop, and they seemed awful on the road — angry, dumb, potentially homicidal, even. But at the restaurant they acted like they were my pals, so what do I make of it?” and she says “Perhaps you misconstrued or exaggerated what you saw in them on the road — they weren’t just jokers?” and he says “Didn’t seem so, on the road. You know, I can read people’s faces pretty well and just as often misread them too, but I swear I thought they’d pull out a gun and aim it out the window at me and the kids. I mean, if half the people in this country have a gun and maybe a quarter of those carry it in their cars, we’ll say, then these two guys would have to have had one between them — the figures and what I saw in their faces tell me this — if not a semiautomatic something or another and a grenade,” and she says “Certainly you’re exaggerating here,” and he says “Yeah, a little about the weapons, maybe,” and she says “But also the aiming the gun and possibly shooting all of you. That’s a horrible thought and I’m sure inaccurate and I hope you didn’t pass it on to the kids,” and he says “Only minimally, inappreciably, fleetingly and undoubtedly mistakenly, but they’ve indicated since they’ve forgotten the whole incident. But in the Roy Rogers, I’m telling you, if they sold beer there I bet these guys would have slapped my back and cuffed my chin and said ‘Hiya, palsy,’ and stood me to a couple of rounds, not that I’d drink when I had to drive, naturally,” and she says “I’ll remember that for you when we go to our next party,” and he says “I meant over long trips.” “But what else happened? — you said ‘two near accidents,’” and he says “Other one was partly my fault, going into the center lane — middle lane — which do you use?” and she says “What of it?” and he says “Funny, but that’s what Margo said before, though about what I forget — she must’ve got the expression from you; I was wondering where,” and she says “Really, what of it? This is long distance, sweetie, and I don’t mind the extended call and the expense if it’s about something,” and he says “So? So? Money, big deal, for you could have what you have when crash, you’re gone or forever out of it and what’s the dough good for then, except to help take care of you? If anything, that’s something you think about when you almost get into a serious collision, but of course mostly what if the kids were hurt or you were — me — and they survived. Hurt and worse. But it was partly my fault, is what I’m saying, darting into the middle lane, I’ll settle on, same time this old guy in front of me does from the passing lane — fast lane?…sorry. In other words, we’re both in the fast lane — one syllable, so in the end that’s what decides it for me, but he wasn’t budging from it, when he suddenly darts into the middle lane the second after I did — close but not a close call, I don’t think, but close enough, at seventy miles an hour, to send scare shivers through me and get me flashing about death and the kids and so on. So he was partly at fault too, since he didn’t signal or look. Or just didn’t signal, I’m not sure if he didn’t look, but if he did he wouldn’t have made that sudden reckless move, right? But maybe it was all too fast, my sudden reckless move and his, that he didn’t have time, so it’s a draw,” and she says “Time to what?” and he says “About him? I forget — what was I saying? But that was close call number two, and then, to top it off hour and a half or so from home, the rain,” and she says “You had rain? It was gorgeous here all day. Sunny, golden, clear, a light wind that felt like balmy sea breezes — the most heaven-sent weather on the most rhapsodizical of spring days,” and he says “Not a drop? No wonder — we got it all. It came down in buckets, barrels, big street Dumpsters, I never experienced rain like it and it didn’t stop being this way till we parked in front of the house, where it just sort of decompressed, though it still might have been coming down torrentially everywhere else around us; in other words, with a little bit of stretching, I think we were blessed. I would have stopped at a rest area — rest stop? — service area? — those places with the Roy Rockefellers and Bob’s Pig Boys and Taco Bellies, if I could have seen a sign for one through the rain. Okay, I saw the signs but on that neck of the Interstate all the exits to those service areas are from the left side and I was in no way going to drive in the fast lane to enter one and it seemed too chancy to get over,” and she says “So what did you do?” and he says “Thought of you. No. Rest of the way drove slowly in the slow lane, of course — twenty-five, twenty, though still with limited visibility. But we’re here, trip’s over with, so as you and Margo say, what of it, right?” “Good. I’m glad you’re all home and safe. Anything else?” and he says “To tell you? Wait, all I’ve been doing is going on about me — what about you? Besides the beautiful day, anything interesting or exciting or new happen to you?” and she says “It’s been nice being with my folks, that’s all, and I did a bit of book buying and store browsing and got my hair trimmed and—” and he says “There is something. Before I left, when we were in the hallway outside your parents’ apartment — I was holding you, I think — we were holding each other — and I said I was psychic, you remember?” and she says no and he says “Or maybe I only thought it, but I could almost swear I told you it, and just about something specific, not psychic in general. But I was in this rush to get on the road to get caught in that rain and nearly clipped by two cars so I said I’d tell you about it tonight, but you don’t remember,” and she says “It’s beginning to sound familiar but that may be only because you’re talking about it now and it’s tricking me into thinking I heard it before,” and he says “Too bad; I was hoping you’d remember and tell me what I was referring to in my being psychic,” and she says “Nope, I’m sorry, the bell’s not hinging,” and he says “Let me think, for I don’t know why but I don’t want to lose it — I mean how many times in his life is a man psychic, or this one?” and she says “Better you tell me tomorrow after you remember. Write it down if it comes back,” and he says “I suppose. Oh — this is it, flash from the front — that you already regretted we were gone, or that I was, or it had to be ‘we,’ and I had just been thinking, moment before you said it, that you were thinking this,” and she says “Come again?” and he says “Step one, I felt by your look but really more by something that jumped into my head that you were regretting that we or I was gone — were? was?…I should stop that; I’m so inconsolable—incorrigible,” and she says “You are and it’s getting—” and he says “And step two, that you said exactly what I’d been thinking, that ‘we’ or ‘I’ but probably ‘we,’ or maybe ‘I,’” and she says “If you say I did, I believe you, since it’s not a thought I’d mind having. And I did, for a few minutes, regret that you and the girls were gone, right after you took the elevator down. But we’ll see each other soon,” and he says “Of course. So…I miss you; you, me?” and she says “Of course,” and he says “Of course, of course. And, well, I love you, do you, still, me?” and she says “What a thing. Why would you ask?” and he says “Oh, you know, one acts like a dodo so much, he has to hear it again just to make sure his mate hasn’t turned off him, but it really only popped into me like the other things,” and she says “You’re my one and only, my uno moono, the big man in my life,” and he says “Same here, but ‘woman.’ Never since we started seeing each other…no one else,” and she says “Good, and same here, and I’ll see you in two days, or is it three? We’ll talk,” and Julie says “Did you hear what Daddy said to Mommy?” and Margo says “Don’t be a child,” and Lee says “I hear what the girls are saying. You’re in for it now. Get a good night’s sleep and make sure they do too,” and he says “What do you think, I’m going to play pinochle half the night with them?” and she says “Pinochle? Where’d that come from?” and he says “Just another pop-in thought, but it was a game my dad played with his cronies, though I don’t think I thought of him once today. No, that’s not true either,” and she says “What else isn’t?” and he says “Nothing, just an expression. We better get. Bye-bye, my lovey,” and she says “Goodnight,” and he says “And give my best to your parents,” and she says “I will.”