There was a whiff of the volatile about this man that always put me in modes of appeasement, of friendly deferral.

"Yeah," said Nick. "Let me know."

"I will, I promise. I'll let you know."

"Good. It's a deal."

"What's a deal?"

"You letting me know."

"Yes, that's a deal. Have you seen my kid?"

Nick tilted his head, a new shine in his eyes.

"Your kid? Is it one of these little homos?"

He swiveled in his chair, opened up once more on the boys where they crouched near the ruins of a doghouse.

"Soup's on, motherlovers!"

What he shot at them, I realized now, was some variant of Vitamin Drink. The children squealed and dove into the splintered wood.

"No, not one of these particular little homos," I said, jogged past Nick and climbed the side staircase.

The house was low-ceilinged and dark and as I crept through the kitchen I could almost have been some Hollywood SEAL with a pistol in my hand, an avuncular sergeant in my earbud. I could almost have been any one of the righteous manhunters I'd portrayed in cramped hallways since boyhood, but I was not, felt the dull sear of that notness now.

More howls broke through the roar of a television as I turned into a carpeted parlor, slunk past a flimsy rack of cut-glass bowls, china dolls, and other sad lady collectibles, toward the light of a dusty bay window.

I knew this room from past pickups and now I felt an odd flutter in my gut. Bernie could be facedown in the shag, choking on a cherry sucker from that quartz dish on Christine's coffee table. No longer the high-tech avenger, I'd end up a different character in the same Hollywood movie, the stunned father with his kid's limp corpse in his arms, the collateral damage cutaway.

But Bernie had not choked on a sucker. Bernie was not dead in the shag. Bernie was chewing another boy's penis. The boy screamed as my son gnawed denim. Hunched before the giant TV, where a prelapsarian New York Yankees highlight reel looped swank Jeterian feats, the boys, in their backlit shadow-play agon, jerked like Mrs. Cooley's beloved Balinese puppets.

"Daddy!" shouted Bernie, lifted his head from the drool-dark pants of his prey.

"Hey, little man," I said. "Ready to go home?"

Bernie hopped up, did his funny lope across the room.

"Say goodbye to Aiden," I said, recognized the other boy now, the rabbit-eyed only of another Christine regular, a single mom who sold cell phone plans from a storefront on Ditmars Avenue.

"Bye," said Bernie.

"Bye," called Aiden, perhaps distracted by the swell of martial melodies surging from the plasma. Blue Angels navy fighters streaked over old Yankee Stadium, the bond forged between two of the best-funded teams of their time.

I lifted Bernie into the crook of my arm, passed back through the kitchen, snatched our canvas supply bag, stepped out the door.

The children shivered in the grass, their hair and skin faintly iridescent. No longer the lawn chair hunter, Nick had taken a knee, a precarious pose for a man his size. He leaned on the rifle stock, the bright barrel wedged in his mouth. He bucked his head away, mimed the rifle's recoil in slow motion, let the weapon clatter to the asphalt.

"Just like that," he told the children.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"I'm telling the kids a story about my brother."

"Do you think it's appropriate?"

"What does that mean? Appropriate? Is that a fancy word for having no balls?"

"No, it just means-"

"I know what it means."

"Okay, Nick, I'm sorry if I-"

"Don't worry about it. You were not wrong to wonder. Why is he showing kids how to eat a bullet, right? But this is not what it looks like."

"It's not?"

"Not completely."

"Oh."

"And our deal still stands."

"Yes, it does," I said. "Come on, Bernie. See you kids later."

"Bye!"

Nick turned back to his rapt flock.

"See, my brother wanted to plaster the wall with his brains, but the round went through his cheek. Right here, see? Took out a wad of cheek meat, but he survived. After that he started going to this megachurch in Connecticut. We don't talk much."

I hoisted Bernie to my shoulders, carried him across the street.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, Bern."

"Is Nick bad?"

"No, I don't think he's bad."

"Is he sad?"

"Maybe he's a little sad."

"Is he angry?"

"He might be a little angry."

"I bit Aiden's winky and mashed his face."

"Yeah, Bern, I saw. Why do you think you did that?"

"I wanted to."

"Why do you think you wanted to?"

"I didn't want him to have his train."

"Was it his train?"

"Yeah."

"'Did he share it with you?"

"Yes."

"So, what was the problem?"

"He had it."

"Okay, Bern. Maybe you should have been happy he was sharing it with you, though. That was nice, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"So, do you think it was right to bite and mash?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I wanted to."

"You baffle me, Bern."

"What's baffle? Like waffle?"

"It sounds a little like 'waffle,' doesn't it? You've got a good ear. But baffle means I don't know why you bit and mashed Aiden."

"I told you why."

"I know, you wanted to."

"Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"What's depressive?"

"Who called you depressive? Nick?"

"Nobody."

"Bernie, tell me. Who called you depressive? One of the older boys?"

These poor kids, they gleaned these terms at random, overheard them from afternoon TV, dinner chat. Or else the language of pathology was affixed to them by some shrink Mengele eager to stuff them with Ritalin and Zoloft.

"Who said you were depressive, Bernie?"

"Nobody, Daddy."

"Are you sure?"

"You're the depressive, Daddy. Mommy said. On the phone with Paul."

"Who's Paul?"

"Paul from work. He's an artist."

Paul did design for Maura's firm. Some animation websites also featured his cartoons. I'd met him in midtown once, when I picked up Maura for her birthday dinner. He seemed pleasant, if not a little bland, a tan, lanky guy who wore expensive vintage clothing. I'd kept waiting for Maura to tell me he was gay-she'd declared herself a devoted fag hag when we started dating, said it might even interfere with her quest for heterosexual companionship-but she'd never said anything about Paul's preference. I knew better than to ask.

"Right," I said. "Paul from work."

"Paul is going to make me a whole little movie of superheroes. On his computer. That's what Mommy said. Are you a pansy, Daddy?"

"Wait," I said. "Did Mommy say 'depressive,' or 'pansy'?"

"What's a pansy?"

"It's a flower, Bernie."

"I love flowers. I pick them for Mommy but she gets mad because other people need to enjoy them."

"That's right. Mommy's right."

"You're a nice pansy, Daddy."

"Thank you, Bernie."

"You're welcome."

Most nights after dinner Bernie and I retired to his room to play guys. We'd each grip one of his grotesquely proportioned action mutants, bash them together, growl.

"I will defeat you and meal you, Wolfsquid, Scourge of Decency," I might say.

But now Bernie appeared at the threshold of a new phase. The last time I had offered up my services, he shrugged.

"I just want to go to my room and unwind," he said.

Later I went in to tell him a story. He'd become critical of the saccharine bent of my bedtime sagas.

"Don't forget the evil," he said now.

I worked up some woods for him, some trolls, some berry-picking children. I put the evil in there. Finally a hippo ex machina rescued the children from the castle of the Lanky Animator.

Soon Bernie was asleep, or down, in the parlance of our suffering set.

We cooked pork chops from the corner butcher. Maura patted the meat with a Cajun rub. I made the salad, stirred in the vinaigrette. This was our time. The sacred hour of our sacred institution. I sipped some sour Malbec Maura had brought home from an office party and decided not to prod about Paul, instead told Maura about Nick's offer, if only for the chance to launch some jokes at the giant's expense, get my girl to cackle again.