“What are you doing in here?”
“Your computer takes forever to start,” she said. “I grabbed a book.”
“You want to come watch the ball game?” he asked her. “The good guys are up in the fifth.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t keep the players straight anymore. It’s like all of their names blend together.”
“Just come sit with me then. Bring your book if you want. I’ve been missing you in there.”
The book Cherilyn was reading was called Lines of Succession: A World History. It was a textbook Douglas used to teach to his ninth-graders before the change of curriculum. Cherilyn kept her place in the book with a pencil and followed her husband to the couch. She sat cross-legged on the cushions and placed a pillow over her thighs. She took one glance at the television. Estenitando Escarbiones was at the plate and only hitting .230.
“See what I mean?” she said, when the announcer called out his name.
“It’s a big world out there,” Douglas said, and began to whistle an old bullfighting song called “El Carne.”
“You’ve got that right,” Cherilyn said and reopened the book.
Douglas watched her flip through the pages, scanning over pictures of dukes and duchesses, kings and queens. “What are you reading?” he asked, even though he knew. She pointed to a paragraph on the page.
“Did you know that twenty of the world’s fifty richest men are oil sheiks?” she asked.
“I did know that,” Douglas said. “Or, at least, at one point that was true.”
“Look at this one,” she said, and turned the book around for him to see. “I can’t pronounce his name, either.” The man in the picture was in full ceremonial dress, standing next to a camel cloaked in a red jewel-covered blanket. “He’s a prince, it looks like. He’s got a big mustache like you used to have,” she said. “Where do you think he’s from?”
“Saudi Arabia, probably,” Douglas said. “They have princes.”
Cherilyn got off the couch and walked over to the wall where Douglas had hung a map, long ago. She ran her fingers over the glass frame until she found Saudi Arabia and tapped it with her nails. “Here it is,” she said. “I found it.”
Cherilyn returned to the couch but didn’t speak. Instead, she read the large book until her husband fell asleep. Later that night, she turned off the television and woke him up. She then led him to the bedroom and, once they were under the covers, began to touch him in the well-rehearsed way that, Douglas knew, meant she wanted to make love. After fifteen years of marriage, this was an increasingly unexpected request, and so Douglas, sleepy as he was, was happy to oblige. He recalled the most recent times they had been together, maybe three occasions in the few months since Christmas, the last a tipsy night after a school fundraiser, an impromptu session on the living room couch, of all places, and orchestrated this new scene in the way he’d so often done the past twenty years that they’d shared themselves with each other. He then collapsed, grateful and pleased, on top of her.
Life, at this moment, was not so bad.
What troubled Douglas, though, and what was truly unprecedented in the life they’d long lived together, was this:
After he finished, Cherilyn asked him to do it again.
“But maybe,” she whispered. “A little bit harder this time.”
2
Jacob
He had his father’s face. Maybe there was some value to that.
And the face he used to share: his twin brother’s. Jacob could never forget.
But what else did people think about him, as a person? Sixteen years old? Skinny? Invisible? That he was the other Richieu boy, the lesser twin, as he had always been? What had he done to stand out? Win a spelling bee? Play Pokémon? Rock out his PSATs? Bake a soufflé? Suck at basketball? That is quite the résumé. So, Jacob wondered, what could he do to better himself? To move forward? Was that even a thing that he wanted? And where was all the anger he was supposed to feel about his brother’s death, all that rage he’d initially felt? And how again do you rationalize a numerator? Do you multiply both the numerator and denominator by √ax + b + 2? And is today Thursday? Is it tacos or chicken nuggets for lunch? And how serious was she about him? About anything? Could he ask her? Could he be honest? Could he tell her he wanted out? What were the options before him? And how could he, the person in charge of his own thoughts, not know even the simplest things about himself?
Jacob had little time to consider these questions as, behind him, two other boys tromped in through the men’s room door. He checked them out through the reflection in the bathroom mirror, registered neither fear nor simple pleasure at their appearance, and went back to staring at his own face. The boys were Randall Wilky and Brett Boone, both of whom Jacob knew in the obvious way that everyone knew one another at Deerfield Catholic, but these boys were truly non-integers, neither positive nor negative, in the math of Jacob’s life. They were freshmen, as Jacob was a junior, and were so engrossed in their own conversation that they didn’t even notice him.
“She doesn’t actually blow on it, you idiot,” Randall said. “It’s just a phrase. Jesus, man.”
“My point,” Brett said, “was even if that’s all she did, I would prefer she do it from a great distance.”
Them, too? Jacob wondered. Even them?
He picked at a scab on his chin and washed his hands. He ripped a long stretch of brown paper towels from the dispenser and held it against his skin until the small dot of blood disappeared. He then turned to leave as the boys brushed past him and sidled up at the urinals.
“What’s up, J?” Randall said. “Hey, you’re a smart guy. Can you tell this dumbass what a blowjob is?”
“It’s an idiom,” Jacob said. “Not a phrase. Getting a blowjob is an idiom.”
“All I’m saying is that I believe Brett would be an idiom not to accept Jenny’s offer.”
“That,” Jacob said, “would be a maxim.”
“And that,” Brett said, “is a pretty good website.”
The boys laughed and bumped their fists over the urinals as Jacob put the straps of his pack around his shoulders. He paused at the bathroom door before leaving. He paid no attention to the familiar graffiti sprawled across it but looked only at the top-left corner, which was still, thankfully, blank. He then left the bathroom and walked into the bustling hallway, alive with the clamor of slammed lockers and squeaking sneakers, as the two hundred and twenty-four students of Deerfield Catholic hustled to first period.