"With who?"
"People."
"Well, have a good time," Paul says, pulling the cookie sheet out of the oven.
Elaine comes down. "Who was that?"
"Jennifer," Paul says. "Here and gone."
"Where does she go at this hour?"
"Out," Paul says.
"With who?"
"People."
"You don't have to be so rude," Elaine says. "It's not like I'm going to tell her mother."
Paul ignores her. "Where do you want to eat?"
"Upstairs in bed, with the TV?"
They load things back into grocery bags and carry up the loot. Paul brings a tray of hot snacks and the pitcher of martinis.
"God, I'm glad to be home," Elaine says, settling in on the bed, arranging an assortment of jars and boxes in front of her-olives, onion, crackers, Stilton.
The phone rings, the machine answers.
"Hi, Elaine, it's Mom. That's nice you're using the new machine. All right, I guess you're not home, otherwise I'm sure you'd take pity on your poor mother and pick up." She pauses, waiting for Elaine to answer. "All right, I'll talk to you tomorrow."
Paul pours martinis.
"Our kid is a pervert," Elaine says, dropping olives in. "We have to do something about it."
"Tomorrow. We'll fix it tomorrow."
They gorge. They eat pigs in blankets, cheese and crackers, sardines-stinky things that will make them steam and smoke. They flip channels-going round and round, 1 to 99, backward and forward; basketball, old movie, sitcom, sitcom, Headline News, The Weather Channel. They dip their fingers into jars, pulling out tastes of this and that-juices drip everywhere. Paul refills their glasses-his homemade rocket fuel splashes over.
"Did we finish last night or did we just stop?" Elaine asks.
"Is there such a thing as an end?" Paul says.
"I hope so."
"Who wins?" he asks.
"It can't continue," she says. "None of this can continue." She finishes her drink and quickly has another. Her face goes white. "Do you want a divorce?"
"Do you?"
"I asked you first."
"Why are you asking me that?"
"I have to," Elaine says.
"No. Not really," he says.
"Which is it-no or not really?" "No," he says.
"Do you want to go off with her?" Elaine continues.
"Who?" he asks nervously.
"Whoever she is."
"No," he says. "Is there somewhere else you want to be?" he quizzes her.
"No," she says. "There's nowhere. There's nothing."
They drink, they eat.
Paul unzips his pants; pills roll out of the pocket.
"What're those?"
He recognizes the bright colors. "Mental candy, mood enhancers," Paul says, wondering how the magic trick worked, how the palm kisser got the pills out of the gold vial and into Paul's pocket.
"Where'd you get them?"
"A guy on the train gave them to me," he says, picking pills up off the floor, counting, eight, nine, ten.
"Mr. Wash Your Bowl?"
"Exactly." Paul shows Elaine a palmful. "Different colors for different effects. If you're crabby, you take an orange; if you want bliss, eat a blue. Red is for energy. You can take a few at a time."
"What happens if you take too many?"
"You get overwhelmed and maybe a headache, but then you take a couple of aspirin."
Elaine picks out an orange and a red. She swallows them with the last of her drink.
Paul sits on Elaine's side of the bed, naked except for a shirt and tie. He takes a bottle of nail polish out of the night table and proceeds to paint his toes-fire-engine red.
"Should we go and talk to somebody?" Elaine asks.
"What could someone tell us?" Paul asks, working on his little toe. "Everything we're doing is wrong-we're lousy parents, criminals. If anyone knew us, they wouldn't like us."
He's got one leg crossed over the other. Elaine's view is up under his shirt-his balls, his bandage.
"What is it with you anyway-the shaving, the nail polish, the nightgowns?"
"Exploring parts of myself that I'd otherwise ignore."
"It scares me," Elaine says. "I find it weird and scary."
"Haven't you ever been tempted to do something that others might find unusual?"
Elaine doesn't answer. "It's important to try and be normal, as normal as you can possibly be."
The phone rings again. They freeze. They listen. Elaine wonders if it's Sammy, homesick Sammy.
"Just calling to say good night. Are you in there?"
"Pat," Paul says, identifying the voice.
"Did you two already go to bed? Nighty-night," she says. "Sleep tight."
"Let's get the children back," Paul suddenly says. "Their rooms are ready, everything is ready, waiting. Let's go and get them." Paul imagines getting into the car and driving over to Mr. and Mrs. Meaders, banging on the door and insisting that they surrender the little pervert. He sees himself pulling up in front of Mrs. Apple's house-tooting the horn and plucking Sammy from his sleep; in effect kidnapping their own children and bringing them home.
"It's one-thirty in the morning, and you're drunk," Elaine says. "We'll get them tomorrow, when it's light, when we can see what we're doing."
There is a silence. They doze.
"It's so good to be alone," Elaine says.
"We can be ourselves."
"We can be nothing."
"Are you feeling anything yet?" he asks.
"No. What colors did you take?"
"Green and orange." "Green-what's that do?"
"Not much, apparently," Paul says.
"Maybe you have to take them for a while before they work," Elaine says.
"Like how long?"
"Antidepressants take three to five weeks."
"We only have a dozen," Paul says.
"Well, maybe that's what it takes," Elaine says, noticing that Paul's big toe, with the hairy knuckle, looks interesting painted red.
Paul is dreaming. He is dreaming that he's ice-fishing, he's holding a long line that goes down into a hole. There is a tug. He pulls on the string-his own head pops through the ice. His lips are blue. "What took you so long?" he says to himself. His eyes open.
The bed is wet.
Paul panics. His thoughts race-the tattoo guy hit a nerve and has rendered him incontinent. He is forty-six years old, neither young enough nor old enough to wear diapers. He starts to cry; a pathetic rush of fear bellows out. "Oh, God, I think I wet the bed," he says. "Oh, God!"
Elaine wakes up. "What?"
"I wet the bed."
She feels around; the bed is damp.
"There's something horrible wrong with me," Paul sobs.