Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

Let’s do this, Amy, let’s have a baby
– and she
said no. I was expecting nervousness, caution, worry –
Nick, will I be a good mom?
– but I got a clipped, cold 
no
.
A no without loopholes. Nothing dramatic, no big deal, just
not something she was interested in anymore. ‘Because I
realized I’d be stuck doing all the hard stuff,’ she reasoned.
‘All the diapers and doctors’ appointments and discipline,
and you’d just breeze in and be Fun Daddy. I’d do all the
work to make them good people, and you’d undo it anyway,
and they’d love you and hate me.’

---

I told Amy it wasn’t true, but she didn’t believe me. I
told her I didn’t just 
want
a child, I 
needed
a child. I had to
know I could love a person unconditionally, that I could
make a little creature feel constantly welcome and wanted
no matter what. That I could be a different kind of father than
my dad was. That I could raise a boy who wasn’t like me.
I begged her. Amy remained unmoved.
A year later, I got a notice in the mail: The clinic would
dispose of my semen unless they heard from us. I left the
letter on the dining room table, an open rebuke. Three days
later, I saw it in the trash. That was our final communication
on the subject.
By then I’d already been secretly dating Andie for
months, so I had no right to be upset. But that didn’t stop my
aching, and it didn’t stop me from daydreaming about our
boy, mine and Amy’s. I’d gotten attached to him. The fact
was, Amy and I would make a great child.
The marionettes were watching me with alarmed black
eyes. I peered out my window, saw that the news trucks had
packed it in, so I went out into the warm night. Time to walk.
Maybe a lone tabloid writer was trailing me; if so, I didn’t
care. I headed through our complex, then forty-five minutes
out along River Road, then onto the highway that shot right
through the middle of Carthage. Thirty loud, fumy minutes –
past car dealerships with trucks displayed appealingly like
desserts, past fast-food chains and liquor stores and mini-
marts and gas stations – until I reached the turnoff for
downtown. I had encountered not a single other person on
foot the entire time, only faceless blurs whizzing past me in
cars.

---

It was close to midnight. I passed The Bar, tempted to
go in but put off by the crowds. A reporter or two had to be
camped out in there. It’s what I would do. But I wanted to be
in a bar. I wanted to be surrounded by people, having fun,
blowing off steam. I walked another fifteen minutes to the
other end of downtown, to a cheesier, rowdier, younger bar
where the bathrooms were always laced with vomit on
Saturday nights. It was a bar that Andie’s crowd would go
to, and perhaps, who knew, drag along Andie. It would be a
nice bit of luck to see her there. At least gauge her mood
from across the room. And if she wasn’t there then I’d have
a fucking drink.
I went as deep into the bar as I could – no Andie, no
Andie. My face was partially covered by a baseball cap.
Even so, I felt a few pings as I moved past crowds of
drinkers: heads abruptly turning toward me, the wide eyes
of identification. 
That guy! Right?
Mid-July. I wondered if I’d become so nefarious come
October, I’d be some frat boy’s tasteless Halloween
costume: mop of blond hair, an 
Amazing Amy
book tucked
under an armpit. Go said she’d received half a dozen
phone calls asking if The Bar had an official T-shirt for sale.
(We didn’t, thank God.)
I sat down and ordered a Scotch from the bartender, a
guy about my age who stared at me a beat too long,
deciding whether he would serve me. He finally, grudgingly,
set down a small tumbler in front of me, his nostrils flared.
When I got out my wallet, he aimed an alarmed palm up at
me. ‘I do not want your money, man. Not at all.’
I left cash anyway. Asshole.
When I tried to flag him for another drink, he glanced

---

my way, shook his head, and leaned in toward the woman
he was chatting up. A few seconds later, she discreetly
looked toward me, pretending she was stretching. Her
mouth turned down as she nodded.