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magazine she was flipping through. It was empty save for one waning ice cube and a fingernail depth of tawny coloured booze.
    She looked over at me and smiled. “Come sit with your mom.” She patted her knee and slurred, “You handsome fellow.”
    I joined her. Uncle Tony’s mutterings of “fuckin’ thing” and “bitch-whore of a thing” subsided and shortly there was the smell of cooking meat in the air. Mother and I looked at her magazine.
    â€œLook at this,” she pointed with a free finger, the rest wrapped around her glass. “This is how the year 2000 will look, and it’s happening now. Isn’t that amazing?”
    I didn’t say anything but looked as pages flipped by. Space-age materials hugged galactic heroes and space vixens as they strutted down glowing runways. It was amazing. The designer names passing by were as exotic as the models: Thierry Mugler, Azzedine Alaïa…
    â€œOh, here. Look at this,” Mother said breathily. “Yohji Yamamoto.”
    Sharp shoulders, round hips, Lycra and Viscose, two-foot-long spikes of hair and dark racoon-eye makeup. Material that made me think of the woman in the pool. All of this was wrapped in the heady faint chemical smells coming from the ink on the glossy pages and from between Mother’s lips.
    I looked over my shoulder at her and smiled. She wrapped an arm around my belly and gave me a limp squeeze.
    â€œAren’t they gorgeous?” she whispered.
    I could only nod.
    Then she scowled.
    â€œHow did you get a splinter in your forehead?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer she spun me into a more accessible position on her lap and pinched at my forehead. She tweezed the end of the splinter between two fingernails and slid it slowly out of the sheath of my skin.
    â€œCome here, Rich.” Father’s voice boomed from near the barbeque.
    I looked over and was blinded. The sun was setting and hovered just above the fence. I squinted and saw Father holding a football. He faked a throw and I flinched. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing. I slid off Mother’s lap and wandered down onto the grass.
    â€œCatch the ball,” Father said.  
    With the sun behind him and no further prompting, he threw the football. A flitting shadow blipped across the sun and then there was a quick pain in my shoulder before I spun around and landed face-first in the grass.
    â€œJesus, Jack. Be careful,” Mother said.
    â€œYou gotta get behind it and cradle the catch,” Father called to me and mimicked the move.
    I heard a loud squeak from Leonard laughing on the patio. The noise was silenced by a slap to the back of his head from Auntie Maggie.
    â€œBurgers are ready,” called Uncle Tony.
    I pushed up and brushed off my knees and the front of my shirt. My shoulder throbbed deep under the skin. I couldn’t cry anymore today. I wouldn’t, especially in front of Father.
    We all made our way to the picnic table. The sun dipped below the fence-line and my mind drifted from my hamburger to the deep pain in my shoulder to the woman in the skin-coloured bikini who had been just on the other side of that fence.
    The evening cooled and we gathered around the firepit where Uncle Tony built a fire. The adults drank scotch and chatted against the crackle of burning wood. Uncle Tony got up and opened the patio door.
    â€œCome look at this,” he said to Father. “You too, boys.”
    We went into the living room. Uncle Tony took out a small silver disc and put it into a machine.
    â€œWow,” Father said, “a CD player.”
    Uncle Tony, always with the latest gadgets, smiled.
    â€œWe just got these in. A Sony CDP-101,” he said. “Two channels. Sixteen-bit PCM encoding at a 44.1 kilohertz sample ratio per channel.”
    Father let out a low whistle and ran a finger along the top of the machine. Leonard and I looked at each other. I wondered what Uncle