* * *
“I wonder what Mr. Kinghorn is like in real life,” Kristen mused dreamily as they sat in their Avis rental, enmeshed in O’Hare traffic.
“Why don’t you call the Avis office and ask for him,” Alfred said sourly.
“You’re not in a very good mood,” Kristen said. “You’ve just indulged in your fetish; isn’t that supposed to leave you flushed and a little high?”
“Let’s forget it happened.”
“I wish!”
Alfred sighed. “You used to like my screaming.”
“I wouldn’t say like.”
“You used to believe in it.”
“True.”
“What changed?”
Kristen considered this. At last she said, “It got boring.”
4
The misery of the drive to Miles’s Winnetka house was surpassed only by the misery of being there: eating sandwiches on his brother’s deck overlooking Lake Michigan, leaves sashaying from the trees and settling on the water like yellow lily pads. His mother had enfolded him in her jasmine-scented embrace. Introductions to Kristen had been made （followed by pointed, questioning looks that translated to: “She’s lovely; it’s a miracle; she must not know him well; or maybe she’s off in some way we can’t see…？”）。 Inquiries about the travel from New York had been satisfied （vaguely）， and there was the new baby, of course, and he was tiny, of course, and everyone wanted to hold him, of course, and although Kristen had been nervous to meet Alfred’s family, now she seemed glad just to be away from people who were screaming. Alfred had forgotten that Ames was coming. But Ames was here, along with the usual amorphous tension that arose from the shadowy mystery of his career. That mystery had swelled in direct proportion to Ames’s muscle mass starting a couple of years after 9/11, when he advanced from enlisted soldier to Special Ops. Now, at thirty-one, he was allegedly retired, but he’d bulked up yet more, spent most of his time overseas, and, at a mention of Bin Laden’s recent assassination, seemed briefly unsure who that was.
Miles’s Quiet Supremacy had hardened over the years into an exoskeleton, growing stiffer with each honor until he looked barely capable of motion, much less spontaneity. His every gesture seemed to Alfred an act of pretense, even concealment—why else did Miles’s only genuine smiles seem to come when Trudy was taking pictures with her iPhone? Trudy was an avid Facebook poster, a touter of family vacations and toddler artworks, a coiner of sappy hashtags like #motherdaughterlove and #thankgoodnessforgrandparents that Alfred logged on to Facebook specifically to be enraged by. His antidote to such artifice was usually the memory of recent screaming, but today that led him to the Avis bus and his public defeat. It was impossible to imagine screaming again. The project was dead without warning, leaving—what? What could Alfred do or say or even think that would make it possible to sit on Miles’s deck for one more fucking minute?
And then it came to him. He could ask a question.
“Hey, Miles,” he said. “Are you in touch at all with Jack Stevens?”
Miles paused infinitesimally in the act of eating, like a jump in a video. “No,” he said with deliberation. “I am not.”
A heavy silence followed, which Kristen tried to alleviate by asking brightly, “Who’s Jack Stevens?”
Miles’s mouth made a grim line. Trudy looked at the deck. Alfred felt Kristen’s panic at having said the wrong thing.
“Oh, honestly, Miles,” their mother said. “Can we please be done with this drama?”
Susan （as Miles and Alfred had started calling their mother） looked younger than fifty-seven, lithe and ashy-haired in her blue wraparound dress and soft white sweater—younger, somehow, than she’d looked when they were children. Then she’d been Harried Mom, the kind who runs onto the baseball field between innings to rub sunscreen on your nose. Those moms were always a little comic in their bright clothes and oversize fanny packs, hacking up watermelons for the team. After the divorce she grew quiet, watchful, as if she no longer knew what role to assume. But with time she’d acquired a more knowing air and begun doing what she pleased. There was nothing funny about her.