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to stimuli. Since Harry’s birth, Joan has not been interested in sex, but, for Jacob, the relentlessness and insistence of the baby’s physical being draws constant attention to bodies and skin and nakedness and his own maturity and virility. He finds himself getting turned on in the most inappropriate situations, such as by a pissed-off ex, in front of her boyfriend.
    Liesel doesn’t attract him as strongly as Joan, but he likes her looks, which are ruddy and earthy. She had tried to couch their breakup as a rejection of her appearance. Sorry I’m not a ballerina , she’d said, bending the last word into a long, sarcastic sine wave.
    “What do you do, Ray?” he asks.
    “I’m a cop.” Ray smiles.
    Liesel leans against him, and he wraps an arm around her waist and tucks his fingers into her pocket. “No more academics for me,” she says. “I can’t take all the narcissism and insecurity.”
    “Fair enough,” Jacob says.
    “Really, though, what are you doing out drinking all by yourself?” Liesel asks.
    He has no answer, of course, beyond his simple desire to bedrinking and by himself and not at home. But to say this would suggest discontentment. One of Jacob’s greatest fears is that his life will not appear intentional. Had he subconsciously wanted to run into Liesel? Maybe. But only to use her as a reminder that he is happy. “I was supposed to meet a colleague, but I’m afraid I’m being stood up.”
    “A colleague,” Liesel says, imitating his haughty tone. “How unfortunate.”
    It is, Jacob realizes, time to leave. “I should go.”
    “Great running into you.” Liesel smiles. “Here in my favorite bar. What a coincidence.”
    When he opens the door, piled-up snow falls inside. “Nice move!” calls the bartender. But there is nothing Jacob can do. He clambers out into the cold, wedging the door closed behind him as best he can. The stairs are buried under a ramp of powder, and he climbs carefully, clinging to the frigid handrail, probing for each step. At the top, in a streetlamp’s soft orange circle, he pauses, enjoying the cold, which settles on his body like a weight. He turns for home.
    A BLAST OF HEAT STRIKES HIM WHEN HE OPENS THE DOOR , AND HE strips off his coat before he even takes the key out of the lock. Joan is sitting on the floor with her back against the hissing radiator and her legs open in a wide V around the blanket where Harry is sitting upright, unsupported, in a diaper and a University of Chicago T-shirt, studying an assortment of rattles strewn around his plump legs. They turn to look at Jacob, Joan with the absorbed, private smile she gets around the baby, Harry with grave hesitation that turns to openmouthed delight, showing his gums and two bottom teeth.
    “Hello, sweethearts,” Jacob says, tugging his sweater over his head and stepping on the heels of his boots to pry them off.
    When he stoops to kiss Joan’s cheek, he slides his hand down the neck of her shirt. She gave up on breast-feeding as abruptly andconclusively as she had quit dancing, even when the doctor said she should keep trying. Jacob suspects she had simply disliked it. Her breasts are bigger than they were before Harry but still no more than gentle hillocks on her chest, self-supporting, nothing pendulous. She looks up at him, not lusty, mildly amused. He tweaks her nipple. “Knock it off, they’re sore.”
    “Do you know how many times we’ve had sex?” he asks her. “Ever?”
    “I’m not keeping a tally.”
    “Thirty-six. Eight when you came to visit. Twenty-one when you were pregnant. Seven since the baby.” He lies down on the floor, curved on his side, his body closing the wedge of her legs, penning Harry in, who cranes around to look at him and tips over.
    “Oops,” Joan says to the baby. Harry sweeps his limbs like four oars.
    Jacob smoothes Harry’s spider silk over his scalp. “It’s not that many, is all I’m saying.”
    “There’s no hurry. You’ll have plenty of