Alexandra had not yet made it from the airport to Murray Hill, where Robert and his wife, Cassandra, lived. Jeremy took the stairs two at a time, the smell of family dinners in the hallway, and at the door to the apartment held a bottle of wine in the style of demonstration. “You made it,” Cassandra said, wiping her hands on her pants to accept the bottle. “What’s cooking?”
“Take this. It’s an old family recipe. Toss the grapes in a crock, get your feet going with fifty others, and then it is a piece of cake.”
“Robert never told me you came from vineyard stock.”
“Every man needs his secrets,” Jeremy said. “Do you drink red?”
“I drink whatever color’s in front of me.”
“My good-time gal,” Robert said, come from a deeper room and holding his wife’s waist from the side so that their hips touched.
“It’s bad luck standing in a doorway,” Cassandra said, “The devil takes in the indecisive.”
“And what’s more, there’s cheese inside,” Robert said.
In the apartment, they leaned in various positions in the kitchen as the wine was poured, then moved into the living room, chewing on slices of Manchego. There was public broadcasting television playing, and the screen shunted between pictures of men in fatigues and men praying, tanks and regional maps and close-up shots of people with blurred-out faces.
Robert lit a joint, closed his eyes, blew out. He leaned back on the couch.
“PTSD treatment,” he said, stretching the joint toward Jeremy. “It doesn’t count.”
Jeremy waved him off. “What’s the trauma today?”
Robert moved his laptop to show Jeremy a video, grainy and cast in green light. There was a cloth bag atop a torso. Then there wasn’t. A beheading.
“But why did you click?”
“It was everywhere on Cathexis. I was positively surrounded. Terrorism was all anyone was Cathecting in today.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jeremy said. “I don’t participate in the twenty-first century.”
“You don’t feel like you’re missing out?”
“I don’t.”
“But if you don’t Cathect, it’s like you don’t even exist. You miss invitations.”
“I don’t know about that, Robert,” Cassandra said. “I happen to see two eyes and a nose myself.”
“And you invited me here,” Jeremy said. “What more could I want?”
The boy could be heard on the baby monitor. Robert went for Wally in another room, returned with the child held over his chest. He was humming a song.
“It’s a good thing you’re not single,” Robert said. He pressed his mouth to his son’s stomach, kissed it. “These days, I don’t know a woman who trusts a man who doesn’t Cathect.”
“It is a good thing I’m not single,” Jeremy said.
“You’re like my sister, Marissa,” Robert said.
“Sensible? A smart dresser?”
Robert reached Wally overhead. A laugh. “She thinks it’s undignified to emote online.”
“Meanwhile,” Cassandra said emphatically.
“Meanwhile, she’s a test subject for an experiment on virtual reality treatment for PTSD and claims the algorithm is a better listener than humans.”
“Of course, what kind of person isn’t ashamed to talk to a computer, if you ask me,” Cassandra said.
“Maybe it works,” Jeremy said.
Cassandra cleared her throat, put her hands out in the manner of halting traffic. “Marissa’s wonderful. Don’t get me wrong. Wonderful mother. Wonderful kids. But she is too much once in a while, and that’s all, folks.”
“I have nothing to hide,” Robert said. “I don’t want to hide. I want my boy to grow up knowing it’s fine for men to express feelings. That it’s good to. That good men do.”
“And that’s marvelous you do,” Jeremy said. “Better you than I.”
A few minutes later, Alexandra arrived in a sleek black suit with small gold knobs in her ears. Cassandra’s face bunched up with friendliness. Wally was crying, and she was bending her knees rhythmically in soothe as Robert poured another glass of wine.
“Cuh-yute shirt,” Cassandra said.
Alexandra emitted a startled “Oh.” Her eyebrows quirked, and she seemed to search a moment. “Cute phone?” she said. Her face was turned to the baby, and it looked to Jeremy like a falling building.