"Cheese collective?"
"Jesus, Maddie. We were depending on you guys. We didn't realize it was just an intense hobby."
"I resent that, Bernie's Dad."
"I'm just being honest, Bernie's immature, self-involved, pseudo-intellectual preschool teacher."
"I'm closing the door now," said Maddie. "For Bernie and Aiden's sake."
"Close away," I said. "Tourist. Honky."
"Honky?"
"Ofay."
"We're all white in this conversation," said Maddie.
"This might be your year abroad, lady," said Denise, "but we live here."
"I really am closing the door," said Maddie, and did.
"Come on," said Denise. "There's a Montessori on Ditmars. Maybe they've got some openings."
We marched off together.
"Daddy," said Bernie. "Is Carl sad?"
"I think so, yes," I said.
"Is he bad?"
"He's young. He's idealistic."
"He's a total disaster," said Bernie.
We skipped the Montessori, got milkshakes instead.
"Cheese collective." Denise laughed. "That was funny. You're funny."
I was funny again, the sexy jester Maura could no longer appreciate. Denise's swirling green eyes appreciated all. We'd go to her house, plant the children in front of a longish DVD,Winnie-the-Pooh, perhaps, devour each other in the bedroom. She was a single mom, probably no stranger to kid-friendly assignations. (Had she ever listened to a thrusting lover sputter a broken poem of climax into her ear while Aiden moaned with night terrors over the monitor? Might be fun to ask.)
Denise smiled, spooned up her cafe au lait. The noise of our kin fell away. I pictured days lost in a soft white bed, us rising only to pee or nibble on some olives or last night's stale baguette before our bodies would start to twitch with lust again. I could almost smell the high stink of our clinches.
It might be awkward with Aiden around. It would be better if he didn't have to experience that particular cliche, the naked Mommy Friend, raw whang aflap, washing up in the bathroom or drinking from the kitchen tap. Hey, kid. Your mom is a real nice lady. You like baseball? You talk at all? Suit yourself. It would be better, but it wasn't mandatory that Aiden be spared the crushing animal truth, especially if it meant I forgo crushing animal need.
Denise was definitely not touched out. Denise was all touched in.
I watched her wipe chocolate from Aiden's mouth. Then I looked down at Bernie, the top of his head, peered through his hair at a sliver of pinkish scalp. His tender little scalp. We'd made that scalp, Maura and I, shielded it from the scalp hunters of this world.
There was no way I could go through with this. I wasn't that guy. No matter what had become of my marriage, I wasn't Roger. My life would never be a cavalcade of nooners. Pornography and corn chips would be my mistresses. Maura would be my wife.
I'd led Denise on. Now I'd have to let her down. She'd see through me anyway, the timid husband afraid to act upon his desires, the evader, the deflector, the sublimation machine. She'd find a better man to touch her in and out, somebody capable of real love, real deceit. Maybe a single man, though they said the good ones all were taken. She'd find a married man who could afford another secret family. Some men could pull that off. Purdy never had the choice, and Roger never dared, as far as I knew, but he was a one-off specialist. There were other sorts, however, capacious souls, who yearned for monogamy with several women at once. Their energy was unthinkable, biblical, Koranic. Poor Denise. She'd probably just been horny, wanted dick. Here I was getting sanctimonious and my whang did not even warrant it. But I had no choice, I had to close off this buzz between us. She'd have to learn to live with the spurning.
Denise threw some money on the Formica.
"So, Milo, it was nice to meet you, officially. Guess we may end up seeing you at Christine's. Goodbye, Bernie."
"Goodbye," said Bernie. "Goodbye, Aiden."
"Goodbye, Bernie."
"You're leaving?" I said.
"I just got a text from my boyfriend. He's coming home early with pizza."
"Sounds fun," I said. "Boyfriend?"
I watched her face register what I, and only I, it turned out, had been mulling, saw the surprise there, the disgust, the deeper disgust, the moral judgment, the slight flattery, the steepening dive into new realms of physical revulsion, followed by pity's steadying hand. Denise snapped her purse shut.
"His name is Larry. He's great. Hope you can meet him sometime. He's a trainer at a gym in Manhattan. He trains the guy on the news."
"Which one?" I said.
"The one with the awesome body. Though not as awesome as Larry's. Okay, Aidey, let's go."
Denise stood, hustled her little boy out of the diner.
"Daddy, why did they have to leave?"
Bernie blew sugar across the table through a straw. Normally I would have snatched the straw away, admonished him loudly enough to demonstrate to the dining public my stern but fair-minded parental manner. But now I just sat there, dazed, let Bernie blow sugar and shred napkins, pour ice water onto his ever-burgeoning heap of sugar and shredded napkins, tamp it with a coffee spoon.
"They needed to meet up with Denise's friend Larry."
"Larry, with the muscles?"
"You know him?"
"He once came to pick Aiden up at Christine's."
"Oh."
"Aiden says that Larry is gone. He went to a land called Elmira. He got a pole of violets for it."
"He what?"
"He… ladled his prole."
"Violated his parole."
"That's it. You know, Daddy. You always know."
"Aiden told you this?"
"His mommy cries a lot. Aiden saw Larry's winky, too."
"When did he see Larry's winky?"
"In the kitchen. Aiden got up from a bad dream and went to the kitchen and Larry was drinking juice out of the carton, which you said is bad, but Larry does it."
"It is bad," I said. "It's just really wrong to do that, Bernie."
"Larry does it."
"Larry got violated up to Elmira."
"Did he have to go there because he drank from the carton?"
"Life can be very tough on people," I said.
I hated to travel into Manhattan with Bernie. The boy figured the sidewalks for a snack spread. Old gum, cigarette butts, bottle caps, petrified turds, even the occasional crack vial or broken syringe-Bernie could work it all into his mouth. Of course he could find such ad hoc oral solace on the boulevards of Queens, but the trash seemed less virulent here. It was the home poison.
Still, I had to see Maura. We could surprise her, Bernie and I, maybe drink some lemonade on a bench in Bryant Park. I knew she took her salads there when the weather was good. Sometimes she told amusing stories about the scene, the ongoing mash-up of tourists, homeless drunks, street clowns, construction workers, and office temps reading their papers or calling their friends or playing bocce ball with the bocce ball hustlers.
I'd witnessed some odd things myself, the few times I'd met Maura for lunch or crossed through to the Public Library before getting back to Mediocre. I always seemed to bump into somebody I knew, people from work, old acquaintances. I'd once seen Maurice Gunderson deliver a lecture about the apocalypse to a large group gathered in the outdoor reading area. It was a warm spring day and he looked golden, prophetic, up at the lectern.
When his talk was over I stood in the autograph line with a copy of his book I'd taken from a display table.
He got into an argument with the man in front of me about crop circles. The man had proof they were pranks. Maurice said the pranks and the proof of the pranks were both part of a cover-up. They went on for a while. I was about to slip away when Maurice looked past the man and called me over.
"Sir, what's your feeling about all of this?"
I stood there, beamed, waited for Maurice to recognize me.
"No pressure," said Maurice, looked back to the other man. "Maybe we can continue this at the party."