Bad in math down there, still doing it like an average five-year-old. Or good, better than up here,” knocking on his head without turning around. “Because with your added months, yours almost three, hers more than seven, it’s almost another year, which could be considered a year, since you don’t say when you’re nine years and ten months, let’s say, that you’re nine, do you, or even nine and three quarters? You’d say ‘almost ten.’” “That’s right. Or ‘about ten.’ That’s what I’d say.” “So there.” “Six times two hundred fifty, or six times two hundred and then six times fifty, and you get with either…fifteen hundred. This problem’s too easy. Now six times ten and six times two — what was the first number I had, two thousand six hundred twenty?” “I believe so.” “Three one nine two.” “What’s that?” “The answer to everything. Three thousand one hundred—” “Good, you got it, great,” he said, “you’re a whiz.” “Fooled you. It’s four one nine two. How can it be three one nine two if the first part of the answer was two thousand six hundred and twenty? Six is more than half of ten, and one thousand and three hundred is at least half of two thousand six—” “I don’t get you. But maybe we should check the first part of your answer.” “Why? Zero added to two six two is two six twenty.” “So? I still don’t get your point. Anyway, let’s say you’re right and I’m slow today. When I was a kid though—” “Give me some even tougher ones. A hundreds number times one in the thousands.” Did. “Another.” Did and several others. She got them all right or some she got before he did and he just assumed they were right, for while he was still doing one she’d ask for another and he’d give it. “Now some minuses in the thousands,” and he said “Those you need paper for. And even if you of all quiz-whizzers don’t, no no no, I just want to be quiet and think.” She started talking and he said “Pleez, sweetie.” Her lips poufed and he said “All right, but whisperingly, and last gab from you for a while, what?” and she said “I wanted to ask what you were thinking of or planning to,” and he said “I haven’t given a thought to it yet, okay? Now finished, and don’t tell me you’re bored. You’ve books, paper, pencils, markers, imagination, introspection, fanciful inventiveness, memories and so on and you’re also musical and can hum a sweet soft tune, besides those ole standbys, passing scenery, dreams and do-nothing sleep.” He drove and thought she’s not talking and what should he think about? Work, but hell with that, wants to be rapt or entertained. Turned the radio on, woman on the Philadelphia public station was gushing about a group called The Jazz Messengers and he thought he doesn’t know these guys but he hates jazz or most of what he’s heard for forty years, same thing and shallowness and no talk’s going to make it more interesting, and turned it off. If not deep music or just about anything by Vivaldi, Poulenc or Bach then why couldn’t it be, and in a car preferably, something to think about and maybe even stir him up, a good talk, debate or discussion about ideas and stimulating people and things, not crime, drugs, health, business, politics, finance or another international or cultural report — alligator hunting in the Everglades, icebound Aleuts going potty or getting juiced — but art, philosophy, ethics and if art not opera, films, musicals, crafts or dance and where it’d go on for an hour and had only now begun. Maybe once every three years he catches something like that on the road, and really almost any poet or playwright who talks about his life and work on the radio’s okay, novelists are always pushing their books or beating their chests or he can hardly understand. Should he get up to seventy? No other cars around, it’s legal on the Interstates in Maine and New Hampshire and places, so why not here? It’d be fifteen over the limit and if he’s stopped it wouldn’t so much be the cost, though that’d hurt, but getting delayed. What’s, he crazy? — it’d be about a day’s wage. Hadn’t seen, and then he saw one, between some trees in the median strip, car facing his way and trooper watching him as he passed, so good thing he was thinking of the should or shouldn’t he while doing sixty for he’s sure he would have been nabbed, no other cars near him for half a mile now it seemed. Then Julie awoke, knuckled her eyes and he said “Good, you napped almost an hour,” and she said “I wasn’t asleep, I only had my eyes closed and was thinking,” and Margo said “What about?” and she said “None of your business,” and that she was thirsty and had to pee and Margo me-tooed and that she was also hungry, so they stopped at the next rest area for gas and bathrooms and a snack, coffee to go for him, curly French fries between the girls for the car and fruit punch he had them drink in the Roy Rogers because he didn’t want them to make a mess and if the car suddenly had to slow or stop, the straws to cut their palates, “but if you’re good the rest of the trip, real hamburgers in warm hamburger buns and all the trimmins for dinner and ginger ale in champagne glasses”—took no more than twenty minutes. Wanted to get home fast, get the mail, unpack quickly and put everything away, garbage and two weeks of plastic, bottles and cans on the walk for tomorrow’s pickup, get the kids’ dinner ready, while things are cooking have a scotch on rocks as he sits in his Morris chair and goes through the newspapers and mail that had collected past two days and dump the catalogs and advertising circulars and inserts that had come before Lee gets ahold of them. Then after dinner make a couple of calls and finish his work work. No calls. Tomorrow the kids can talk to Lee before they go to school, or she might not be up, so that evening, and he’ll see his associate soon enough and work he’ll do after the kids are asleep. Read them a story when their lights are out and they’re in bed, or tell them one from his head, maybe about a car, the trip, New York City, the road. Comical incident in the tunnel or at a rest stop. Or they’re being followed in an unmarked car by Goofy — loves him as a character, as he gets to talk in a stupid voice and say funny dumb things — and Nancy Drew, since Margo says she’s getting too old for just Goofy and Minnie and the gang. Goofy and Nancy are an item, he’ll say, and explain what “item” here is. They think the car he and the kids are in is stolen and while they’re tailing them they put in a check on their license plate. They pull them over and Goofy asks all sorts of dumb questions. He’s much better at dialog than description or that thing that moves the action along and has all the filler and fill-in, like what the setting is and surroundings look like and why the characters do this and that and so on. “Is this a car you’re in?” Goofy can say. “You mean,” Nancy can correct him, “is this their car they’re in.” “Um-m-m, I think that’s what I said, didn’t I? Is this a their car they’re in?” “Excuse me, Goofy, but what’s a their car?” and Goofy can say “Um-m-m, wha’d’ya think? A their car is their car just as an our car is ours. Gosh, Nancy, you goofy or something? No, you can’t be, since you’re Nancy, I just said, and I’m Goofy, I think, and the captain would never put two Goofys in one patrol car, would he? ‘cause how could we be able to figure out the more harder police things?” “Oh, I give up on you already, Goofy. Our engagement’s off and I don’t want to be your police partner anymore either. And now that he’s out of the picture,” she can say to the girls, “you two want to be my sidekicks? Even if our engagement’s kaput, police work’s got to go on.” Not that but something like and Goofy can say “Hey, don’t blame me for getting out of your picture, for who wants their sides kicked?” The girls love when he brings them into the stories. But he’ll forget this one by the time he decides to tell it tonight and he might even forget he was planning to tell them about Nancy and Goofy. Knows his memory. He’ll come up with something though. Always does even if most as stories with satisfying endings that relate to what came before it and tie it all up, fail. Maybe one with his wife and kids in the car. Taking a vacation or the highway suddenly opens up and they drive spirally down an Alice-like hole. Or where the kids and he drive straight home, no Goofy and Nancy stop, open the door and she’s there, house warm, fire going, dinner ready, table set, drink waiting for him with the ice just plopped in, while he’s sitting reading the paper and having the drink, his wife and kids unload the car and put everything away and the garbage, plastic, bottles and cans on the walk, lots of good mail to go through, correspondence and checks, no ads or bills. “But how’d you get here?” he can say and she can say “Flew.” “Plane, and then you cabbed over?” and she can say “No, this time with my arms,” and demonstrates around the house, up the stairs, down to the basement, then opens the front door while hovering above it like a hummingbird and holding the knob and flies outside. “We too,” the kids can shout, “teach us,” and he can say “Not Daddy, he’s afr-fr-fraid of heights when his f-f-feet aren’t on something,” but they convince him it’ll be a great unforgettable family event and they all, after the kids and he ask her how and she says “Just hold your arms out, no trick to it, and say the magic blessing, ‘gefilte fish,’” fly someplace. Out the window, or door, for windows are too Peter Pannish and he tries with these to be original as he can, so to Inner Mongolia, outer Bessarabia, Central Chile, interior Australia, soar with condors and wine and dine with aborigines who are swinging on vines while the four of them glide. “Whee, whee,” it could all be pretty happy and the right kind of dream-generating stuff for the girls before they go to sleep. So something with Lee, and it’ll be nice for them too if he includes her, Mommy with them if only in this way. Actually, he thought, wishes she were in the car with him; talking with her passes the time better and he likes putting his hand on her thigh while he drives and rubbing and squeezing it or under her knee and maybe her backside. If he were doing it now with the thigh, he thought, kids in back, she’d probably smile for him not to go further and maybe even say as she’s done a number of times for something like this “Can I take a raincheck on it?” If one of the kids said “For what?” he or she has always said “Conversation.” Alone with her on a big empty road or just a car now and then flitting past, he’s stuck his hand on her crotch, even unzipped her fly a couple of times in broad daylight and tight as her jeans still were was able to push her panties down enough to stroke her hair there and once got the tip of his middle finger to the top of her crack but not far enough to touch the bump. Never got that far with any girl in a car, he thought. Once, though, forgets who, though she was very pretty, long dark hair, and slim and always smelling of some intoxicating rose perfume or cologne, Fanny or Franny her name was, they were in high school, rich kid who at the time said she wanted to be a medical missionary while he wanted to be a dentist — called her several times after that and then lost track of her — on the way back on a date where they danced and illegally drank in a Long Island nightclub, and she stuck her hand in his fly, or he steered it in for her. He’d unzipped it, she had to have heard the zip and probably the couple in the front seat too, and he put her hand in under his coat and she jerked it around a little. Tried to get his hand in her underpants under her skirt but she wouldn’t let him. Then tried sticking his finger in her vagina through the underpants and she put her lips to his ear and said “No, that hurts. I’ll do this for you,” jerking him some more, “but do you have a clean cloth? — that stuff can gush.” “How do you know?” and she whispered “Don’t be immature or I’ll stop.” He got out a hanky, forgets how far he got or if she had to stop because of the couple in front or something. Once, though, maybe this was the first time, he met a girl at a party who after he danced and necked with for a while, did it to him till he came. Her name he remembers: Honey and that she had lots of wavy honey-colored hair on top and that when they sat on a radiator cover in the dark she took out some pins and let it drop to her butt. Never even phoned her after that though she gave him her number and said she’d really like to see him. When he was going back to the subway with his friends — party was in the Bronx, they lived in Manhattan — he told them they’d never believe what happened with that girl he was with and one said “She gave you a handjob,” and he said “You saw? It was almost pitch black in the room and I had my jacket over me,” and his friend said “No, but she did? — what a triumph. Nat got jerked off by a chickie he just met, Nat got jerked off, the fucking lucky.” They all said for him to call her and she’ll bang him the next time or the time after and then every time after that and he said he probably will but she’s so homely and they said “So what, her cunt isn’t; they’re all the same, a big juicy slit.” What complete schmucks they all were. Winced in the car when he thought of himself then, vulgar, ugly, stupid, and the girclass="underline" she liked him and was nice to him, how could he have been such a creep? His father once said, when he told him he was going on a date with a girl he liked, “Don’t tell me: when you’re your age all a girl’s good for is for whatever you can get. That’s what it was for me and don’t tell me it isn’t for you. But be smart like I was though; you get her in trouble, deny everything or your goose is cooked for keeps.” He said “Wrong, this girl is sweet and from a good family and a real brain and I like her and would be satisfied with just lots of talk and being with her on more dates and at the end of them and only if she wanted, a goodnight kiss,” and his father said “Who do you think you’re fooling? Ah, you’re already on the road to being a patsy with that attitude and ruining your whole dumb life.” Honey didn’t seem very bright and had been too eager to do him, he didn’t understand that since they’d only just met and he never said he liked her, and her dress was too loud and she wore these sparkly dangling ear things and clunky bracelets and had on pancake makeup and her mouth was very wide with a ton of smelly lipstick on it and when she smiled, too much of her gums showed and he wondered if she was doing something to keep a lot more of it hid. She got his number from the girl who gave the party who got it from a friend of his and she said “So, were you serious about wanting to have a date or was that just a line?” and he said she lived too far away for him to subway back and forth to her all the time and she said she could meet him in Manhattan every other date, she loves the city, and he said okay, when he didn’t mean it, “but not this weekend, I got all this studying to do plus my deliveryboy job,” and she said “Maybe I should’ve gone slower with you, but that I didn’t says something about how I felt, doesn’t it?” and he said “Sure, no complaints, I appreciate it,” and didn’t call back. Then Lenore when he was sixteen, girl who did it to lots of guys he’d heard and first to do it to him more than once. That was how he’d heard of her: “She does it to you first date sometimes and to some guys, once she gets to know you, she sticks your prick between her tits and squeezes them into it till you get off. All you do is introduce yourself to her at a dance or on the street, even, if she’s walking with some girls and then you call her up and say you’re the guy who said hello to her or something and is she doing anything now, can you come over? and if she isn’t doing anything, like whacking off another guy, she usually invites you up if she liked your looks and style and she isn’t sick.” Her parents or one of them were always there but they left her alone with him in her bedroom. Amazing, he thought, and with the door shut and lights off except for a bedlamp of such low wattage that it couldn’t have been there for reading or anything