"Purdy promised."

Lee Moss dipped his head, reached for his lapel, spoke into it.

"Shatz, some of the Brazil nut carob chip, please." Lee Moss's eyes seemed lit with a new kind of joy. "It's a wonderful ice cream made by some young farming people upstate. It's keeping me alive."

"Of the pancreas, Purdy said."

"In my pancreas, yes," said Lee Moss.

The door opened and a stern young man in a suit carried in a tray with two bowls and two spoons and a periwinkle pint carton that read: "Blue Newt Creamery."

"I hope you'll join me."

"I ate before I came."

"Don't pass up life's treats, son."

"Okay."

"Wonderful."

The sounds of our spoons on bone china mingled with Lee Moss's hard breathing.

"My advice is to follow this through. Follow-through is the most important thing in life. Go see Charboneau. Tell him the number. Report back. We will see where we are. And perhaps, despite the volatility in the market, Purdy will be in a good enough position to make you a beloved man at your third-tier college. My grandson's at Harvard right now. He's a dummy. But then again most of them are. I went to City College on the GI Bill. This was back when there was America. How is your delicious treat?"

"Delicious."

"We are going to eat ice cream and we are going to eat shit. The trick is to use different spoons."

Twenty-three

A firebird of new need had soared from the ashes of the need creation memo. Maura was stuck late at the office, couldn't pick up Bernie from Christine's. Maura's message made no mention of our trouble. All this searing silence, I worried we might be selling out, going Hollywood.

There was no time to visit Don before I got back to Astoria. The train climbed out of the tunnel, broke into a vista of rail-yards and brick. I called Don's cell phone.

"The flunky."

"Hi, Don."

"Greetings to you, sir."

"I need to speak with you. Can I make you lunch at my house? I'll have my kid at home, but I can keep him busy with a movie while we talk."

"Sure you want to show me where you live?"

I hadn't thought of that, though this was the first time Don, for all his posturing, had swerved into unadorned menace.

"Why not?" I said. "We have happy things to discuss."

"I have yook in my mouth," said Don.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"I'm yooking in my mouth."

"Excuse me?" I said.

"I don't know," said Don. "What is it they say now?"

"Who?"

"The people I went to war for."

Bernie sat alone in Christine's concrete yard. He was chewing on a chunk of tire. The minivan was gone.

"Daddy!"

"Where's Christine?"

"She said she'd be right back. Told me to wait here."

I knelt to the pavement, put my arms out.

"I'm sorry, buddy. Come here. Everything's okay."

Bernie did not move. He picked up a candy wrapper, studied it.

"Daddy, look, it's a superhero."

"Bernie, I love you. I didn't mean for it to get like this. It'll never happen again. I promise."

"Aiden pooped on his winky."

"When was this?"

"I don't know. A million days ago."

"Please put that wrapper down, Bernie. It's garbage."

"When I'm five can I have the wrapper?"

"Yes, Bernie."

"Are we going home now? Let's say goodbye to Aiden."

"He's still here?"

"He's inside with Nick. Nick is cleaning his underpants."

"Nick's here?"

"His brother died. He fell off a roof in Connecticut. Will I ever die in Connecticut?"

"Bernie. We need to go now."

My boy looked up and smiled.

"But wait right here for a second," I said, took the broken side stairs, pushed into the dim kitchen. Nick squatted near the sink with a tissue in his hand. Aiden stood with his pants at his ankles.

"Just don't see how you got it on your johnson, little man," Nick said. "Well, hello, there."

"Everything okay in here?" I said.

"What does it look like?"

I didn't answer, glanced around the cramped room, the pots in teetering stacks, the econo-sized boxes of crackers and cookies and dried noodles, the bank calendars and rubber band balls and tins of allspice. Aiden's stink mingled with the scent of lentils on the stove.

"It looks like you are holding down the fort," I said.

"This is what I'm doing."

"I'm sorry about your brother."

"He got what he wanted."

"It's a tough thing."

"They found the remains of his last meal. Supermarket olive loaf."

"I've got to go now," I said.

"Look," said Nick, dabbed Aiden's testicles. "We don't need static. Life is short. The world is a bully. You want in on my show, just tell me. The offer still stands."

"Thanks for saying that," I said.

We took the back alley way to our house.

"Who's that?" said Bernie.

Don sat on our stoop, a newspaper in his lap.

"That's a friend of Daddy's. When we get inside I'll need to talk to him. You can watch a show."

"But I want to play with you, Daddy. I want to play guys."

"We'll play guys," I said. "We'll always play guys. But I need to talk to this man now."

"His legs are really skinny and there's a shiny part."

"They're made of metal."

It seemed a little chilly for cargo shorts, but then again, what did Don's girls know about the weather?

"Can I get some legs like that?" said Bernie.

We neared the stoop and Don waved. I laid my hand on my son's shaggy head. He was tall enough for that now. I wondered if this gesture, some compound of fond feeling and flight readiness, was hardwired by nature, or maybe television. It felt natural. But so did television.

"Boys!"

Don was doing sunny today.

"Hope you like smoked turkey," I said.

"Sandwiches?" said Don.

"Wraps."

I fixed lunch in the kitchen. Bernie and Don watched a DVD about dinosaurs. I'd seen it many times. The dinosaurs made cooing sounds and laid eggs by rivers and munched the leaves of primordial trees. The movie was for kids, so they never tore open each other's chests. They just growled, pawed the moist earth, marched off into the rainbow ooze.

"Those dudes are armored up, boy," I heard Don say. "Could have used some of those dinosaur hides in Iraq."

"I like this show," said Bernie, "but they don't have the asteroid."

"What asteroid?" said Don.

"Asteroid is what extincted them. It fell on their heads. Their raw eyeballs popped out."

"That's not what happened," said Don.

"What happened?" said Bernie.

"Wheels within wheels, kid. You a truther?"

"What's a truther?"

"You got it in you, I can tell."

"Where in me?"

"Where it counts."

"I can count to ten."

"Can you count to nine eleven?"

"That's a big number."

"It's small potatoes."

"How come you have metal legs?"

"My girls?"

"They're girls?"

"To me they are."

"Why?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"I don't know a lot of stuff."

Don laughed.

"There was a guy who wrote a story," he said. "It was in a book my mother used to read. A story about a goose."

"I have Mother Goose."

"This is different. Anyway, one time, I was about ten, eleven, my mother was reading this story, and smiling, and she didn't smile a lot, so I noticed it right off. I asked her what she was smiling about. Then she read me the part of the story where the guy is describing this big tall army officer. I can't remember his name. I wish I could remember his name. I don't even have the book anymore. But this officer, he was a real mean guy with these high leather boots. Like up to the thighs. And the guy who wrote the story, he said the officer's legs were like girls coming out of those boots. It seemed weird to say that, wrong. But also right. And it made my mother happy for moment. It stayed with me. So, when… well, I call these my girls. And it makes me happy."