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English.
    Jeremy shivers from the chill but the feeling quickly passes. He tends to be impervious to changes in weather; Emily says Jeremy feels words and ideas, not physical conditions. She’s told him he’d endure physical torture without blinking just so long as it wasn’t accompanied by someone questioning his intellect or tousling his newly cut hair.
    Her Jetta is not in the driveway.
    Tomorrow must be garbage day, Jeremy realizes; that explains the line down the street of black trash bins, blue for recycling, green for composting. The city recently hired a group of right-minded young people at minimum wage to go block by block to see if people have properly distributed their waste. Once, Emily got a knock on the door from an earnest SF State student explaining that she’d done a “very good job” segregating her recycling. “But, if you’re up for it, it’d be great if you could be just a tad more vigilant with the newspaper. Mother appreciates it, y’know.”
    “Mother?”
    “Nature.”
    “May I?” Jeremy bellowed from the other room.
    Emily smiled, closing the door. “Too easy. This one’s beneath you. Let’s see if we can work off your venom in bed.”
    Jeremy takes a step toward the trash bins. If he looks inside, will he find evidence telling him whether Emily’s Jetta ismissing because she’s on a date or a sleepover? Maybe she’s on a date with someone less like Jeremy and more like Emily, fluid and easygoing, artistic, Jewish, not that Emily ever considered religion a deal breaker in a mate. Emily finds prayer calming. She likes knowing “something bigger is out there,” an amorphous philosophy that drives Jeremy nuts. On Emily’s ankle is a Star of David tattoo, which Jeremy points out makes it impossible for her to be buried in a Jewish cemetery, and therefore, Jeremy razzes her, means she’s not consistent with her beliefs, like most of the freaking world. Inside the house, a dim light. Jeremy figures it’s the cheap standing lamp next to the couch. He pictures a babysitter on the couch, reading a trashy romance. Jeremy’s stomach sinks. Someone who is not him or Emily put Kent to bed, read him Madeline or Jamberry .
    When it comes to Kent, and virtually only when it comes to Kent, Jeremy’s emotions are precisely what they appear to be—to him and anyone else paying attention. There is a one-to-one relationship between what Kent makes him feel and what he expresses. It’s linear. It adds up. When the two boys are hanging out, Emily says, Jeremy experiences no disconnect. She loves and loathes that Jeremy feels more comfortable with her son than he does with her.
    She also cannot fully understand the phenomenon. Kent challenges Jeremy as much as or more than anyone else. “Why, why, why?” Kent asks Jeremy. Kent cries, he’s mercurial, he comes and goes, he becomes furious when Jeremy (or anyone else) can’t find his stuff, he rolls on the floor with giggles, then throws a tantrum when blood sugar fades. He’s nine and he exhibits all the behaviors of the most annoying of Jeremy’s investors. And Jeremy absolutely fucking loves him.
    Loved him. Or whatever is the correct verb tense for asituation where you’ve lost contact with someone, perhaps indefinitely, because you’ve lost contact with his mother, for at least the last three weeks. To top it off, a few nights before his breakup with Emily, he and Kent actually had a disagreement—and now Jeremy feels estranged from the boy, too.
    Jeremy takes the first step of the slick stairs at Emily’s flat. He feels a buzz in his pocket. He pulls out his phone. He examines it for incoming stimuli—a text, a call, an instant message. But there’s nothing. He pulls out his other phone, from his other pocket, even though he didn’t feel a buzz coming from it. Nothing. He rechecks both phones. They are devoid of incoming stimulation.
    Maybe I imagined it, Jeremy thinks, without finding that possibility at all remarkable. He