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there are still a few minutes to go before the cowbell will be rung. My greatest accomplishment of any day is getting him to school on time, but today something is wrong. Where are the other cars, the busy crowd of arriving children and the teacher who greets them? It dawns on me. It is Saturday.
    ***
    I do not subscribe to the concept of karma, but I have come to believe in instant karma, as it was defined by John Lennon in his song of that name. It means, in essence, that we reap what we sow in
this
lifetime—and explains my comeuppance when my girlfriend does to me what I did to my wife. (It actually isn't quite as reprehensible; when she runs off to South America, it is with a relative stranger.) Of course I am distraught, and Nic has to contend with not only my despair, but, upon my recovery after many pathetic months, my subsequent girlfriends, gifted at some things but not substitute motherhood. It is like
The Courtship of Eddie's Father,
but Eddie never went in for breakfast to encounter a lady in a kimono eating his Lucky Charms.
    "Who are you?" Nic asks. He shambles into the kitchen, a jarringly lit room with a black-and-white-checked linoleum floor. He's wearing his pajamas and Oscar the Grouch slippers. The object of the question is a woman with a volcano of dreadlocked hair. An artist, her recent exhibition included hand-tinted photocopies of intimate parts of her body.
    The woman introduces herself and says, "I know who you are. You're Nic. I've heard a lot about you."
    "I haven't heard about you," Nic responds.
    One evening, Nic and I have dinner at a Chestnut Street Italian restaurant with another woman, this one with blond curls and bottle-green eyes. Our dates so far have included Frisbee with Nic on the Marina green and, one Sunday, a San Francisco Giants game, where Nic snagged a foul ball. Back at the flat after dinner, the three of us watch
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.
She flips through magazines in the living room while I read to Nic in his bedroom until he falls asleep.
    Usually, I am careful to lock the door to my bedroom, but this time I forget. In the morning, Nic crawls into my bed. When he notices the woman, who awakens, meeting his eyes, he asks, "What are you doing here?"
    She responds brilliantly. "I spent the night."
    "Oh," Nic says.
    "Like a sleepover."
    "Oh," Nic says again.
    I send Nic to his room to get dressed.
    Later I try to explain it to him, but I know I have made a ghastly mistake.

    It doesn't take much longer for me to realize that my bachelor-father lifestyle probably isn't great for Nic, and so I take a break from dating. Determined to stop repeating the embarrassing and enormously painful mistakes that led to my divorce and other failed relationships, I enter a period of singlehood, self-reflection, and therapy.
    Our lives are quieter.
    On weekends, we take walks around the Embarcadero and up Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower; ride the cable car to Chinatown for dim sum and firecrackers; with our neighbors, Nic's unofficial godfathers, go to movies at the Castro Theatre, where an organist plays "Whistle While You Work" and "San Francisco" on a gilded Wurlitzer before the shows. We ride BART to Berkeley and walk down Telegraph Avenue, watching out for such regulars as the woman with dozens of slices of toast pinned onto her clothing and the Sensitive Naked Man who nonchalantly strolls by.
    On weekday evenings, after Nic does his homework, we play games. We often cook together. And read. Nic loves books:
A Wrinkle in Time,
Roald Dahl,
The Outsiders, The Hobbit.
One night, on the occasion of one of Nic's many unbirthday parties—these are popular after we read
Alice in Wonderland
and
Through the Looking Glass
—we set the table formally, placing stuffed animals at each setting. We dine with the stuffed animals, sitting like sultans on pillows.

    One summer evening in 1989, I am at a friend's dinner party, seated opposite a woman from Manhattan who is visiting her parents in