“Photography. Okay, third time: What the hell are you up to?” Emma shifted her body closer to him, leaned forward a little. James recognized this as flirtation and flushed accordingly.

Emma smelled like food, mangos or cinnamon, a perfume from an oily antique bottle found at a flea market.

James smiled. “I’m playing dad to a friend’s kid.”

“Single dad?”

James’s smile retreated.

“What? No, I’m married.” There. He’d said it.

“You said, ‘I’m playing dad,’ like it was just about you,” said Emma, sipping coffee through a take-out lid.

“Well, my wife doesn’t play dad. She’s, you know, she’s the mom.” This sounded even worse in tandem with Emma’s remote, blank expression in front of him. “That’s all I meant. Don’t look for subtext, you denizen of the post-post-modern generation.” She laughed, even threw back her head. Bull’s-eye.

“Where’s your friend at, the kid’s real dad?” Why the slightly ghetto vernacular among this generation? James was fairly certain that Emma had gone to a liberal arts college somewhere in the Northeast. Swarthmore?

He considered the question, answered slowly. “The boy, Finn, his father died. His mom’s in the hospital. There was … this accident,” he said, surprised to find the words catch in his throat, surprised because the catch was totally sincere, but also surprised by how well it worked (the old James recognized the panty-loosening effect of this confession, while the present one was proud of himself for being honest with a pretty woman). Emma blinked, put down her coffee, and shook her head: “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said. She looked at him closely, as if anticipating something more. “His daycare’s right over there, so I’m going to pick him up later. I came here to write.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s two. Almost two and a half.” And then James couldn’t stop himself: “He’s a really gentle kid, but I don’t know when it’s going to back up on him. He seems okay, and his teacher said he’s doing well. He knows the alphabet and can count to fifteen, which I looked up online and the number thing, that’s advanced, actually. His dad was an engineer, so maybe that’s why. I didn’t really know Marcus that well, that’s the strangest part of this. I knew Finn’s mom, a long time ago. She dated my roommate, but I barely remember her. She remembered me—”

Emma nodded, frowning. What am I saying? wondered James. What is this?

“Anyhoo,” he said.

Emma looked at her watch, started to put on her coat.

“I live just over there,” she said, pointing across the street to a Portuguese bakery.

“Among the flans?” asked James, with immediate regret. Not funny, not sharp. Emma ignored the awkwardness.

“Above, actually, in the apartment with the green door,” she said, rising, tightening her scarf. “Come by sometime and I’ll show you my pictures. You might like them.” James felt certain that was not true, though he thrilled at the invitation. He tried to imagine Emma’s apartment. Would she have milk crates for furniture, like he did at that age? A futon? Somehow he doubted that kids in their twenties lived like that anymore. He couldn’t smell poverty on them. Their teeth were very white. Emma’s jacket looked as expensive as Ana’s.

She leaned in and gave him a double kiss. He sat very still as she did this, aware that if he so much as moved his head, all bets were off, lips would brush lips, and then what else might touch? He was hungry enough, tired enough of Ana’s trail of gentle pushes and rejections, so tired that he might throw a little tongue in there. And then a whorl moving toward the green door above the flans.

He waved at her through the plate glass window of the café, watching as she was absorbed into the accepting crowd.

Ann Silvan moved slowly through the house, as if she might buy it. Ana and James trailed her, up-selling: “I tightened this railing,” said James. “Just to be safe.” Finn waited at the top of the stairs. “Hellooooo!” he called. Ana noticed that he was barefoot. It felt too cold in the house for barefoot. Would this be marked down on the social worker’s notepad?

Ann Silvan walked slowly around the room that Ana had made for Finn. She glanced out the window at the half-finished yard. She asked how he was sleeping, eating, how much he cried.

“You should probably get a safety rail for the bed,” she said.

“What’s that?” asked James.

“A plastic rail, to prevent tumbling. Any toy store will have one. You just tuck it between the mattress and the frame.”

“I put cushions down at night, in case he rolls out,” said Ana.

“A rail is better,” said Ann Silvan.

Finn jumped up and down on the bed. Ana stared at his bare feet; should she immediately go and fetch socks?

Then Ann Silvan asked: “What time do you get home from work, Ana?”

“Oh, it depends,” said Ana. (When had she felt this naked, this tiny? A job interview? An oral exam? Oh, yes—wheeled into the operating room, looking at the panels on the ceiling. The silence of the nurses with their burka eyes peering over their masks, holding the plastic cap of gas over Ana’s mouth. And what they said they did to her: sliced her stomach open like an envelope and put a tiny camera in there, dropped it down like a periscope to peer around at all the bad news. Yes, thought Ana, this felt a little like that.)

Said Ana: “Right before arbitration, or, you know, a closing, then I stay a bit later.” Ann Silvan looked confused. “But usually six. Earlier if I can.” She was shaving hours off her day the way her mother had shaved years off her age. James cleared his throat.

“I’m here, though. I’m with him all the time,” said James.

“When he’s not at daycare,” Ann Silvan corrected him. Then she smiled. “May I spend a little time with Finn alone? Just a few minutes.”

Ana and James nodded.

“We’ll be downstairs, Finny. Ann’s going to play with you for a little bit,” said James. Ana was already on the stairs.

“Did you hear that dig about my job?” whispered Ana.

“At least you have a job,” said James.

They sat on the couch. The coffee Ana had prepared grew cold on the table in front of them. Ann Silvan had left a tiny bite mark in a Leibniz cookie.

“I really hope she’s not sexually abusing him up there,” whispered James.

“Don’t. I’ll start laughing,” said Ana.

“She could be nasty. What do we know about her? We should go to her house with a little pad of paper and fucking—”

The door upstairs opened, and Finn came hopping down the stairs, both feet on each step. James leaped up to monitor his descent. Ann Silvan followed.

“Everything seems good,” she said, moving toward the coatrack in the hall. Ana rose from the couch, surprised.

“I’ll write up my report. I know you’re seeing the lawyer in a couple of days, correct?” Her black coat had a massive fur collar. Ana looked for eyes in it as Ann and James exchanged information and schedules. Finn sat on the bottom stair folding a plastic robot, trying to turn it back into a truck.

“Can I ask you a question?” said Ann, with her hand on the door.

“Of course,” said James, fear rising up to his shoulders. This is when they take him.

“Are prices dropping in this neighborhood, since the crash? Where we are, things have really fallen.” James exhaled.

“Where are you?”

“Out in the east end. Downtown was the way to go, wasn’t it? We should have stayed downtown.”

James felt embarrassed now. His home suddenly seemed designed solely to humiliate this social worker.

“Well, Ana’s the one in charge of the money. She knew it was a good investment. We’re, you know, lucky,” said James.

“Yes, you are,” said Ann Silvan. Ana searched the comment for a sneer, to no avail. Ann crouched down to Finn’s level. “I’ll see you soon, Finn. Be happy.”