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his cheeseburger to his mouth was disturbing.
    “Well,
we’re
not going to any of these other dentists, that’s for sure,” my mom said. “Two sets of teeth you can count on.”
    “Most of them are Chinese,” Gary said. “Or, you know, Oriental somehow.”
    “Did you see about the babies in Kuwait?” my mom said, following an associative trail that I chose not to pursue. “Where they took them out of the incubators and left them to die on the floor? I think that’s so terrible.”
    We ate in silence for a moment: one table at a Denver-area Denny’s paying its own small tribute to the memory of the dead Kuwaiti babies.
    Eventually Stacey decided to move things along. “So what’s your favorite class in school, Eric?” she asked me.
    “Math,” I said.
    “Eric spends a lot of time playing with his computer,” Mom said.
    “Wow!” said Stacey. “A computer?” She gestured to her offspring. “These guys don’t even know the first thing about computers,” she said. “Apparently we’re all going to have to know about them soon, though, right?”
    I was familiar with the computers-are-the-unstoppable-wave-of-the-future rhetoric she was referring to, and I hoped it was true, but I suspected it wasn’t, because besides me and Nicky and Nicky’s dad, nobody seemed to
like
computers very much.
    “Computers never fixed anybody’s teeth, that’s for sure,” Gary said.
    “Tell them what you’re making,” said Mom.
    This was difficult. If I were to reveal even a bare outline of the game now, when it was only half completed, my plan to seduce Bronwen would lose the element of surprise. But after all those hours imagining her reaction, polishing the gemstone of my fantasy, the possibility of arousing her interest was irresistible.
    “We’re making an adventure game,” I said, my voice rising nervously. “Me and my friend Nicky. It’s called Tomb of Morbius.” I risked a glance at Bronwen, who was pouring ketchup on her hash browns.
    “Wow!” Stacey said again. “A computer game! Doesn’t that sound cool, Pete?”
    “I guess,” Pete said. Bronwen put the ketchup down and addressed herself to the eggs.
    “Pete really likes computer games,” Stacey said. “Pac-Man he likes, and that other one… what’s that one you like called, hon?”
    “Street Fighter,” said Pete.
    “Street Fighter,” Stacey said. “We went to the bowling alley for his birthday and he didn’t even want to bowl, he just wanted to play Street Fighter the whole time.”
    “I got the sixth-highest score,” Pete said.
    This was all going wrong. “Our game’s not like an arcade game,” I said, trying not to sound indignant. “It’s an adventure game. It tells you where you are and what you can see, and you type in what you want your character to do.”
    “Oh, it sounds great!” said Stacey. She was a nice person, but she was maybe more appropriate for younger children. “I’m sure he’d love it! Wouldn’t you like to see Eric’s computer game?” she asked Pete.
    “I guess,” he said.
    “Great!” said Stacey. “Maybe he could come over this Saturday and see it! What do you guys think?”
    Pete and I both looked down at our plates. No food cools more quickly than French fries, or suffers more from the cooling. Bronwen asked the waiter to refill her Coke.
    Afterward we went out to the Oberfells’ station wagon, Pete climbing into what we all called, by long-standing custom, the very-back. I was in the middle of the back seat, with my mom on one side and Bronwen on the other; when we turned right I was rocked toward her, and when we turned left she was rocked toward me, and I could feel her arm touching mine through our jackets. I kept returning to my Bronwen-plays-Tomb-of-Morbius fantasy, but nowI had to route around her little brother. What if Pete returned home raving about the game?
It was so fun! There were all these awesome dragons and monsters
… Unlikely: Pete’s usual demeanor was near-catatonic,