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pink from the alcohol.
    “We’ll get you some, baby.”
    I dialed Sydney. “Eleanor again. This really is the last time. But I do have to cancel. Call me so I know you got this message.”
    I turned to Timby. “Me and you.”
    “Really?” His fragile hope just about put me away.
    “What do you want to do?” I said. “Anything. We can go paddleboarding on Lake Union. Get a sandwich to eat at the top of Smith Tower. Fly kites on Kite Hill. Watch the salmon swim upstream at the Ballard Locks.”
    “Can we go to the Gap?”
    To the Gap we walked.
    “This is all about you, baby,” I said.
    Timby tore up the Lucite stairs to the kids’ section. I followed him, my mind barely there.
    Husband caught lying = husband having an affair. It felt like a first idea; it felt pat.
    My friend Merrill told me that on the first date, a guy without realizing it will tell you why the relationship will ultimately fail. He’ll say he doesn’t want kids, or he’s not the type to settle down, or he’s in a fight with his mother. On our first date, Joe presented himself as the kind, curious, principled man he turned out to be.
    Only one thing struck me as odd.
    I don’t know how it came up. But he said his coping style was that he takes it, he takes it, he takes it, until he can’t take it anymore. “What does it look like, when you can’t take it anymore?” I’d asked. “I don’t know,” he’d answered. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
    The previous guy I’d dated was still hung up on his ex. The one before him was fifteen days sober. If the worst Joe could say about himself was there’d be unspecified wall-punching in the future, sign me up! (And even that didn’t materialize! Twenty years and nary a call to the drywall guy.)
    More than anything, Joe is ethical. I once pointed out the irony of him constantly railing against the Catholic Church when he is in fact a walking advertisement for the decency and honesty they preach. (“When they’re not pumping you with lies and self-hatred,” he’d retorted.)
    No way could he be cheating on me.
    On the other hand, I wasn’t giving him enough sex. I had to get on that.
    I poked my head into the dressing room. Timby was trying on corduroy shorts and a T-shirt of a corgi playing drums. Timby’s roll of dimpled, paper-white belly fat popped out over the waistband.
    “Do you think they have kneesocks?” he asked.
    Not in the boys’ section! I knew not to say.
    And then I remembered. This morning. Joe facedown at the table, forehead on the newspaper . Perhaps he’d seen something in it…
    “I’m running across the street to Barnes and Noble just for a sec.”
    “Wait,” Timby said. “You’re leaving me here alone?”
    Before I could fumble for an answer, he said, “Can I pick out something else?” The kid had a gambler’s instinct for knowing when to press.
    “One thing.”
    I shot to the bookstore, bought a Seattle Times, and hustled outside. In the few minutes that took, a stack of wooden barricades had appeared on the sidewalk. Seattle was breaking out in a rash of police blue.
    Did I fail to mention that the Pope was coming to town? Oh yeah. For something called World Youth Day. (Does that not sound like a bogus event the Joker would dream up to ensnare Robin?) His Holiness was scheduled to perform Mass at the Mariners stadium on Saturday.
    I thumbed through the newspaper. Seahawks, Seahawks, Seahawks. Pope, Pope, Pope. A lady was setting out food for crows, and her neighbors were pissed. Any of these could have driven Joe to despair. Or none.
    What a royal frustration! Of course I hadn’t pushed it this morning with Joe. Isn’t that one of the benefits of plodding through so many years of marriage? You get to take things at face value? None of that “You look upset,” “I’m not upset,” “Please talk to me,” “I am talking to you,” “Is it me?,” “I told you I’m fine,” “It is me.” Oy, just thinking about it takes me back to Friday