His single-father friend reads Babar to his son. He sits beside the father and son thinking about the woman he’s going to have later in the night.
His friend and his son are happy people and Babar is so regal, so placid. But I’m going to have so much sex tonight, he thinks, so though they are happy now, I will have future happiness. I can see my happiness coming towards me and I’ll lay it and lay in it and it won’t smell like elephant. We’ll sleep a little while, my hand in her hair, and then we’ll wake up and want each other again, and because we won’t be in public there will be no games about it. One turn and that’s it; there we go.
He decides he must leave a glass of water by their bed at night. If he gets up to pour it, he’ll have insomnia, and she becomes very moody if he wakes her up because control can be her thing and she has to go into the bank at ten. And sometimes she says weird things about his friend and his son, like how they can’t be all right without a mother in the house, and how he’s probably feeding his son drugs to calm him and make him forget the absence of true family. How could such an ugly sentence come out of a face shaped so beautifully? So he’ll say to her, You’re just upset because you want to have a child. I told you we could have one, but I really want to see Australia before all that starts.
And then she is silent and happiness ends because nobody has much sex after such an exchange. And since happiness has already been guillotined, he reminds her that if you don’t have sex you can’t have children. No, he wouldn’t say that, but she imagines it was something he could say but would withhold, because he wanted to hang on to her for the sex and that makes it worse.
Then he would be on the couch, his back muscles fucked, as down the hall she cried, her throat sometimes opening and Oh God coming out.
After his friend puts his son to sleep, he asks the friend if he can stay the night.