He did not quite know why today was different from any other, sadder, but he knew her palate, and so they walked until ice cream. Under glass, the swirled peaks were pink and white and brown. Jeremy and Alexandra took large pleated paper thimbles, and in the night air, when she was done with her little cup and her little spoon, Alexandra began looking at her phone, walking blindly again.
“Tonight stars Chang and Eng, you and your mobile. Who are these people interrupting us, and why is everything they say urgent?”
“It isn’t,” she said. “But the machine makes me compliant with communication. It isn’t my fault.”
Jeremy disposed of the ruined paper. He looked at his wife, standing away from the waste bin on her phone. She was taking it hard, the wait for the child. Their whole lives it seemed the waiting had run, and maybe it had, but he wanted to make his own hope spill onto her, and he didn’t know how.
“Berkowitz had the demon dog Harvey. You will say, ‘The phone made me do it,’” he teased.
Alexandra thumbed on, silent and busy in the eyes.
“They’re so happy now,” Jeremy said. “Robert and Cassandra.”
“Of course they are. They’re reaping the benefits of social currency,” Alexandra said.
“Robert says the baby has a party trick. They say ‘the media’ and rub the baby’s belly until it farts. It works for ‘bureaucrats’ too. A joker already. A critic.”
“Now everything that passes gas is a critic?” Alexandra said. “It’s an intentional fallacy.”
Jeremy put his arm around her. She let him for a half block, maybe more. He was her eyes while she attended to her phone, let out all the discourse in her fingers. There was a ring around the moon indicating the presence of ice crystals, refraction, tiny mirrors glowing circumference into the sky. He wondered what she was typing, but he did not look at her hands.
He decided to make a joke. He said, finally, “Everyone who passes gas is a critic.”
“Only on Cathexis. Cathexis doesn’t afford neutrality.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Jeremy said. “They’re only proud.”
“Social currency.”
“Or love,” said Jeremy.
“Because who hates parents?”
Jeremy shrugged. “Their children sometimes.”
“Or their friends.”
“Our daughter will come,” he said. “We’ll be so happy. Look at Robert and Cassandra.”
“We aren’t Robert and Cassandra.”
“We are far better-looking,” Jeremy said, “and less religious.”
“Our daughter,” she said, losing track of the sentence. Maybe testing the words.