Joint Custody

The first couple of times we had sex, I didn't hear any grunting. It was our third time together, in her apartment, that it hit me—nothing loud or obvious, just a soft, steady, valvelike suspiration floating over the music of Sue Foley. More the sounds of an elderly person trying to sleep than those of an amazing 26-year-old Pilates instructor for whom I was rapidly falling. Her face was muted in the dark—we had yet to do it with the lights on—so I couldn't be sure it was coming from her and I didn't know her well enough to ask. Possibly it was just some wonkety idiosyncrasy with her bed frame. After all, I hadn't heard it when we were at my place, in my bed.

Midway she got up to pee and I heard her talking babyishly to someone in the other room. Her voice was so unexpected, I froze with my face smushed against the mattress, not daring to breathe, trying to make out the words.

She'd never once mentioned a kid. And there had honestly been no signs—no premature sagging, stretch marks, cesarean. Nothing. No toys underfoot, no Crayolaed scrawlings plastered everywhere like masterpieces—at least nothing I glimpsed on the way in.

When she slipped back into the room, beaming, I beamed right back, trying, as best I could, for nonchalant. "Everything OK?"

"Everything's great!" she said, dropping her robe and straddling me in a motion verging on rodeo. Before I could ease things back to the subject of Who the hell were you checking on in the other room? the front-door lock rattled. The tumblers fell into place as someone entered, still knocking.

A guy's voice: "Hello! Just me!"

It was all getting very crowded, very quickly. In about 30 seconds, the population of the apartment, as I understood it, had just doubled. Where there had been two, there were now four.

"Shit!" She dismounted and grabbed her robe again, glaring at the clock radio, calling to this latest arrival out in the hall. "Deacon? Jesus, I didn't think you were coming."

"Sorry, babe! Practice went late. I'll grab him and go!"

She turned down the stereo, then stood with her back to me, her hand on the doorknob, listening. I scanned the room, craned my neck back at the window behind me, thinking fire escape. He was moving around out there like he lived there, raising his voice to be heard as he moved through the apartment. "Hey, Shari? I'm leaving food money on the fridge, OK?"

"OK!" she called back.

The guy's voice was closer now, quieter: "Hey, buddy. How ya doin', buddy? Were you sleeping? You ready to go to Daddy's? We're gonna have fun, aren't we, Pete? Just the boys. Yeah! OK, here we go!"

Shari remained at attention with her nose to the door, listening. She seemed far away. She might have forgotten that I was there behind her, naked in her bed. Then there was another movement in the hall—lower, scraping sounds along the wall. I pictured one of those uncoordinated toddlers, weighted down with a knapsack or swinging his sleeping bag, bumping into furniture—that age when everything is an event and there's so much gear and planning, the simplest outing becomes more complicated than an armored troop movement.

But also, there was that grunting. A sort of snuffling.

I lifted my head, thinking I might catch a glimpse as they passed. Shari had the door ajar now, letting a sliver of light in, standing to one side, as if not wanting this "Daddy" person to know she was in her robe. But wasn't it obvious what she was up to? What else would she be doing in her bedroom, unable to step around from behind the door, at 10 o'clock on Friday evening?

"Bye-bye, Petie," she said through the crack. "You be a good boy for Daddy, OK? Bye-bye! Mommy loves you!"

"I'll bring him back Sunday night?"

"Fine."

My view was narrowed to a sliver, but where I expected Garanimals, I saw actual animal. A rounded, rippling, bristly, black-and-white hide.

I didn't think anyone still owned potbellied pigs. It seemed like that fad had passed a few years back.

She closed the door and returned to the bed and I listened to the sounds of the guy leaving the apartment and locking it from outside and then the slow bump and murmur as he helped the thing down the stairs.

"So," I said. "You own a pig."

"Half a pig, really. Joint custody. That was my ex-boyfriend just now. Deacon." She leaned in and kissed me loudly, once, on the nipple, then sat back up. "It'll be a lot quieter now, I promise. If you still want to...." She ran her finger down the center of my chest, as if alluding to the direction in which things could return. "I'm sorry about all that, before. It was embarrassing. He gets a little jealous when I'm with someone new."

This was where I could pull her down to me, bring the discussion to an end, but I didn't. I asked her how long it had been since they broke up.

"I mean Pete gets jealous," she said. "Our pig. You probably heard him calling when we were...." She bit the cuff of her robe in a way that was so cute and young, how could I possibly have thought, even for a moment, she was some old hag mom, burdened with a kid? "You know, earlier. He didn't like that, what we were doing. He's just vying for attention."

I must have looked confused, because she swatted me with the sash of her robe. "Pete," she said again. "Pete didn't like us messing around."

She slipped out of the robe and burrowed under the covers, giggling, getting me going again. But I was still thinking about the way she'd described him: Our pig. Our.

I used to know a few people with domesticated pigs—mostly single guys who had heard about George Clooney's pig and thought it would help them score. Having a pig never particularly appealed to me, but it was certainly a better prospect than a cat. If this woman became someone I decided I loved and wanted to make a life with, I would like to think I could handle living with a pig.

Except the gnawing problem was that it wouldn't just be our pig. This pig would forever belong to Shari and the guy in the hall. The ex. No matter how serious things got, we would forever be tied to the ex. At least for the life of the pig.

After we were done, she seemed wired and scrambled around the apartment, finding pictures of Pete to show me. "You'd like him," she insisted. "I think you two would really get along."

When we'd come in earlier, after dinner, we'd entered kissing and pretty wound up and most of the lights were off and we headed straight for the bedroom. So now she gave me the complete tour. She showed me the converted hall closet that was Pete's room, just a few feet from her bedroom, so he could come in and snuggle if he wanted, if it was thundering or he had nightmares. He slept in a basket with a cushy pad of Three Little Pigs–patterned fleece, layered with stiff little hair that looked like fine wire. And directly across the narrow hallway, hung just at pig height, was a photo in a nice wooden frame. I had to kneel to get a better look: It was Shari and a guy, arms around each other, crouched low right there in the hall in front of the basket, with Pete between them—much smaller than the hulk I'd glimpsed earlier—and their heads tipped together, beaming and proud. The year it was taken, they had used it as their Christmas card photograph.

•

I tried to be playful with Pete. I looked for excuses to touch him, pat him, tousle his bristly ears. It seemed real important that Shari see how much he liked me.

"Hey, buddy," I'd say.

"Hey, little guy!"

"Hey, big guy!"

"How's it going, champ?"

He'd give me a few wet sniffs, then swivel that snout around and turn tail on those ridiculous sissified trotters. Show me that nubby corkscrew, aloof.

Still, I kept at it. I brought him little gifts. I gave him a Cubs cap, but he shook it loose and later I found it slobbery and chewed in the corner.

As soon as I heard him scooting his empty dish across the kitchen linoleum, I would hop up to fill it. Volunteering like this was part of my scheme: I figured that if he associated me with (continued on page 124)Joint Custody(continued from page 78) meals, I'd be golden. Admittedly, being the guy who shook out the pig chow didn't seem to cause any monumental change in his outlook. He didn't object, but I saw no Lassie-loyal gaze or anything. He'd just glare up at me with regal disdain, like I was some sort of domestic, the hired help.

Give him time, I thought. He'll come around. I didn't need him to actually love me, just to respect me. It wouldn't hurt, of course, if Shari thought he was fond of me. I had yet to be convinced of the permanence of this joint-custody arrangement. It seemed to me the more she could see Pete getting along with a new guy, the more likely her tie with the ex would eventually be severed.

Pete tolerated my attempts at bonding for short intervals. Then he would stop and stare at me as if it just hit him that I was not who he thought I was. He'd trot off and curl up in his basket or scurry under Shari's bed. Or, if she was in bed, he'd sometimes grunt and try to raise himself up, clawing at the dust ruffle with his front hooves—a pathetic move, considering his terra-bound build—until she'd consent to reach over and give him a boost under that bulbous butt and he'd curl up beside her, one marble-like eye open and gaping dully up at me. Those evenings, I'd usually go home to sleep. Shari was irresistible and all and I wanted things to progress, but I wasn't up for sharing a bed with a pig. Maybe with time, but we just weren't there yet.

The horseplay usually involved a spit-encrusted tennis ball, rolling it down the front hall and chasing after him with the same sort of intentionally tangle-footed stumble I used with my nephews, to let them win, let them get ahead. I'd chant encouragement, attaboys, patting him as he huffed and squealed by. If you were watching from an apartment across the street, you would think, There's that guy playing with his pig again. His pig, you'd think. After all, wasn't I the one giving him attention, spending quality time? Wasn't I the one that was present almost every single night? By all outward appearances, anyone would say there was a relationship there, that I mattered in this pig's life.

One Saturday afternoon I was lying on the bedroom floor, trying to fish the tennis ball from under her bed. Frankly, Pete could have retrieved it himself. He stood near enough, huffing away with his corn breath, but I wouldn't say he was that engaged. It was more like he had nothing better to do.

I was highly conscious of Shari's presence. She sat on the bed, working out client training schedules on her laptop. This was my chance to audition, to demonstrate the chummy rapport.

And that's when I heard the neighbors. They were talking loudly, laughing a lot, maybe three or four different voices, in what I thought might be Vietnamese. I had seen the name on the doorbell, something with a lot of ns and improbable vowel-consonant combinations, and I just guessed that it was Vietnamese. Maybe I had Vietnamese in my head, Pete being a Vietnamese potbellied pig and all.

So, lying there on the floor, I put my ear to the wall and said, "Hey, I think that's Vietnamese, Pete. Maybe you can help us out with a little translation."

Snorting, he stepped closer to investigate and I coaxed him over to where I could press one of his big floppy ears to the wall. He just stood there listening, breathing softly, not fighting me.

"Good boy. Can you translate that?"

"They're Korean," Shari said.

"Excuse me?"

"The neighbors are Korean. Pete is Vietnamese."

A laugh came out of me. I couldn't help it. She wasn't smiling. She was totally straight-faced. Not joking around.

"Yeah," I said. "Not that he can understand Vietnamese. He's a pig, right?"

She looked at Pete for a long moment, as if remembering something. "I know. I'm just saying. They're Korean. That's all. Not Vietnamese."

This, I thought, is a little crazy ... but just a little.

•

The next Saturday afternoon, Shari was performing what I imagined was one of her more advanced Pilates routines, bucking like a cowgirl against my pelvic bone, her hair a churning turbine that was truly mesmerizing. But soon the squeal and chuff of the pig calling out once again started to cut through, growing in insistence and pitch, louder and more adamant. I finally had to speak up.

She stopped whipping her hair for a second and rolled her eyes, letting out a sigh. "He's being a brat. Ignore him."

She held my face in her hands, trying to get me to focus.

But I wasn't convinced he was just vying for attention. This grunting was disapproval, verbally giving the new guy the thumbs-down. He wanted Deacon in that bed. He wanted his daddy and his mommy together, his family unit restored and intact. I was an interloper, a defiler, a motherfucker.

It sounded like he was bumping up against a bookshelf or something. I heard the rattle of electrical cords and the thump of furniture legs rocking.

"Do you need to go slop him or whatever?" I asked.

She pressed her fingers flat against my chest, as if to say relax, ignore it, put him out of your mind. Then there was a crash and whoosh and glassy tinkle, like a giant lightbulb popping. He'd pushed the TV over. "Damn it," she said, but kept going.

I felt the first twinge of shrinking, a lack of throb, and I told myself it was the position. I rolled her over on her side and worked around to straight-on missionary, hoping to regain ground. I concentrated, I kept going, but it wasn't the position. I knew that. I said it was, sure, I muttered to her about needing a deeper thrust to keep it up. But I was just looking for an excuse. It was the squealing, the complaining, the endless porcine kvetching. If anything was going to help, I suppose it would be to crank up the stereo till we drowned him out or to lock the little shit in the bathroom down the hall, but what I really needed was a night away from the farm.

I was definitely slipping out of her now, retracting like a bad idea reconsidered. And now it was coming from the other end of the hall, more insistent. Someone was knocking at the front door. Frankly, I welcomed an excuse to stop. Much better to be interrupted than to fail, and I knew I had about three strokes left till noodle time.

Shari yanked on her robe and padded out to answer the door. I stayed behind, certain it was her ex. But it was the neighbors, asking about the noise.

Wrapping myself in a towel, I snuck out softly behind her, catching a glimpse of an Asian couple in the foyer, bent and patting Pete and smiling, while Shari stood holding the door open, making introductions, I assumed. Not wanting to be part of those introductions, I eased into the bathroom for a little repair work. The condom was now a wilted balloon. I peeled it off, grabbed a washcloth, cleaned off the sticky, caked-on condom gunk, patted myself dry and, focusing on the minor cleavage of the model on Shari's shampoo bottle, managed to stroke myself back (continued on page 150)Joint Custody(continued from page 124) to something half presentable. Rewrapping everything with the towel, I slipped out of the bathroom and down the hall and into bed and lined up another fresh condom on her bedside table.

I heard the neighbors leaving and stroked myself under the sheets, eager to present her with the half-wood I had managed to work up. But she was taking her time with something out there. I heard the rustle of paper and pen. I got ready with a big smile.

When Shari reappeared in the bedroom, her eyes were wide, the color washed from her face. "He's never made so much noise that the neighbors complained," she said. "This is a first."

Under the sheets, I let go. "Maybe they're new here."

"They were here when we moved in, Deacon and I, two years ago."

"Oh."

"He's never carried on like that. They didn't know what was going on."

I apologized. I thought she would say, Don't be silly, you're not to blame, but she didn't. She bit her lip and looked back toward the front door, worried, and I took that as an opportunity to knock the new condom off the bedside table, into the trash. When she turned, her face looked like a delicate structure about to collapse. "You know what they said?"

I knew it was something upsetting—her voice wavered and she wasn't getting in bed—but I couldn't even imagine.

"I called Pete over and introduced them to him—you know, to be neighborly and diplomatic and all?"

"Yeah?"

"They said, 'Fine pork! Fine! For good fine eating! Good and delicious, yes?' "

"No, they didn't," I said. She had to be exaggerating.

She looked like a girl, bobbing her head in slow motion. "It's a quote. The man said, 'Fine pork! Fine!' and then his wife said, 'For good fine eating!' and then he said, 'Good and delicious, yes?' "

I was amazed she could remember all that. She pulled a scratch pad out of the pocket of her robe. "I wrote it down after they left. I think it's a threat."

"They had to be kidding," I said. "Were they maybe kidding?"

"They were smiling, but I don't think they were kidding. They were patting him and feeling his haunches and stuff." She looked disgusted. "It's like they were molesting him."

"Are you sure that they weren't just admiring him?"

She sprawled sideways across the bed, reaching for the phone. "Deacon's going to want to hear this."

I took that as a cue to locate my pants. Frankly, I was glad this time. It provided an out. This way I wouldn't have to continue trying to maintain an erection while being harangued by a 100-pound refugee from the county fair.

•

One night at Shari's, Deacon came over and announced that he had an offer to manage a bar in Bangor, Maine. I pumped his hand warmly and congratulated him, thinking, good riddance, but he looked at me funny and then at Shari and Shari explained, "Well, he's not necessarily taking it. We have to discuss it."

I didn't get this, but I kept quiet. They went into the kitchen and sat at the little breakfast table. I withdrew into the bedroom to give them some privacy. Pete trotted out from under the bed and joined them in the kitchen.

After Deacon left, she came in and flopped down on the bed next to me and announced they'd decided he wasn't going to take it.

I really didn't get this.

"That's the deal. We have to agree on job offers that require moving." She explained that a month before, she had turned down a great position in Tacoma because it didn't work out for Deacon.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I hadn't thought about this before, but I now did the math: That meant that if we got serious, and I wanted to take a job somewhere else, I would not only have to work it out with her, but also get the approval of her ex so he could be within driving distance of a fucking pig?

"We have a list of mutually acceptable cities," she said. "Everything else is up for debate. If it's in some place where I could keep teaching Pilates, then, sure, I'd be willing to follow him there. If I thought Pete would like the town."

I hadn't realized how cavalier she was about her connection to this town—which included me—and toward being joined at the hip with Deacon, this hobbling inconvenience. I asked her why she broke up with him anyway.

"Oh," she said, "we've got zero in common. Except for Pete. And we only got him as a sort of last-ditch attempt to work things out."

"Really? It seems to me you guys are still pretty close."

"It's totally over between us. We're friends. That's it."

•

I heard laughter and water running one night when I knocked on Shari's door. Deacon let me in. I was surprised to see him there and more surprised to see he wasn't wearing a shirt. "Bath night," he said, leading me back to where Shari struggled with Pete in the bathtub. "It's a two-person job, especially using the hoof trimmer."

She smiled up at me, but looked overwhelmed, wielding a handheld sprayer attachment that ran from the faucet. Deacon squeezed back in beside her, kneeling to help. Pete was squealing, his hoofs clacking against the porcelain. I stood in the doorway. There was no room left for me.

I wished she weren't wearing that skimpy wife-beater T-shirt. I'm sure it was the rattiest thing she had, perfectly practical for such a messy job, but still, I didn't like how sheer it was, how her nipples showed darkly like candies beneath gauzy paper in a box of fancy chocolates. I offered a hand.

"Too many cooks," she said. Deacon didn't contradict. Then Pete squirmed and kicked his hind legs and the sprayer got her all down her front. She looked up at me with a strand of hair in her face and a pursed expression like this was my fault. And now you could see everything, her tits clearly defined in the wet shirt. But it wasn't an inviting sight, not with that expression thrown in. "Go," she commanded. "Please."

So I kissed her on the top of her head, like a dad, and went home and beat off.

•

I was now convinced something had to be done. And as I was getting ready for work, putting on my shoes in front of Live With Regis and Kelly, some romance know-it-all with careful-looking hair was talking about the overlooked romantic possibilities of a road trip—unhurried long-distance drives to Vegas, Florida, tracing Route 66.

I picked up brochures and TripTiks that day at AAA and spread them on her kitchen table like tarot cards. "Just you and me for a whole week, getting to know each other. What do you say?"

She frowned. "That's sweet, really, but I can't possibly go away that long."

I reminded her that she'd told me how much she liked the freedom and flexibility of her work, that taking time off was easy. The pig would stay with Deacon, who certainly wouldn't mind.

"Oh sure," she said. "Deacon would just love it if I did that. Give him a whole week straight with Pete and he'll do all that bonding and work it so Pete barely looks at me when I return. You don't know the guy. He'd do that."

I didn't get it. "What would he do? Get along with his pet?"

"Just take Pete with him to work, is all. Give him attention 24/7. Buy him treats and toys. You know, spoil him. Let him watch Babe, Charlotte's Web. So when he comes back, he goes, 'Oh yeah, her. Big whoop. Can I just stay with you, Daddy? Please? Pretty please?' "

I didn't say a thing, just waited for her to settle.

"It'll happen," she said.

She was being emotional, so I decided not to question the probability of the pig suddenly, over the course of one week, developing the faculty of speech. She said, "They already have that just the boys' male-bonding crap to begin with, I don't need things stacked against me any more than they are. A week is a long time. I'd be the least favorite after that."

I told her that I didn't see why it had to be a competition between them. It seemed to me she and Deacon had an amicable arrangement.

"You don't know," she said. "You're single. You're not a parent or anything."

I wanted to tell her she wasn't actually a parent, either, but that seemed a fairly obvious point. To me, at least. "I'm just saying, you and Deacon seem to really get along. In fact, if I didn't know he was your ex, if I just saw him talking to you with the pig—"

"What is that supposed to mean? What are you accusing me of?"

"Nothing," I said, because I wasn't—not until that moment, when she had protested so adamantly. Maybe something was going on.

"And he has a name, you know."

I looked down at the brochures, so colorful and fun-looking. I hated to give up on this idea. I put my hands in both of hers and tugged her close, nibbling her neck and whispering. "Come on. We'll bring back all kinds of really great presents for the pig that'll make him love you the most, forever, no contest."

She pulled away. "You keep calling him the pig."

"No, I don't." My denial was automatic. I had no idea why it was wrong to call him a pig, but I could tell, at that moment, it wasn't good.

"It's so dismissive. It shows how you're totally unaccepting. Look, I'm a woman with a pig. That's not going to change. Maybe I'm not your ideal, pigless woman. Maybe you need to find a woman who doesn't have pets and can just—"

"I don't mind pets," I said. "I like animals. It's just—"

She nodded. "It's just you don't like pigs. You don't think they should be pets."

"No! Not it at all. Pigs make fine pets. You could have a llama, I don't care. It's just, if I had a pet, I would want it to be my pet. Our pet."

She inhaled deeply, considering something, then turned to the brochures and slid them into a neat stack. She gave me a peck on the cheek and said, "Thanks, though." And later that evening, before I went back to my place, she said she thought maybe I was rushing things; that I shouldn't say that stuff about having a pet together lightly; that that kind of talk was too serious, too fast. Having a pet together was a big deal. Really big, like talking marriage or having a baby.

•

With the romantic getaway kiboshed, I opted for something far simpler: the evening of total pampering. Here, I was sure, was something Deacon had never given her. I poured her some wine, rubbed her down with massage oils for almost 40 minutes (the length of the mind-numbing New Age CD I had put on) till she fell asleep. Then I tiptoed out to prepare the tub. I'd brought along the works: bath beads, a Ziploc full of rose petals to sprinkle on the water, two terrycloth-lined inflatable pillows, scented candles and matches in case I couldn't find any, since she didn't smoke. I put a lot of thought into this.

Except for the drain. There was no built-in plunger thingy, and if there was a rubber stopper I couldn't find it. I realized that the only bath I had seen her take was at my place. Even Pete took showers.

And now he was standing beside me, staring at the empty tub, then up at me, like, What now, genius?

I didn't want to wake Shari. Maybe she didn't even have one. I scribbled a note at the hall desk—Be right back. Don't move!—and was halfway out the door when I realized that I didn't have a key. Screw it, I decided, leaving the door ajar and racing down the stairs, through a cloud of kimchi wafting from the Koreans. I would be right back.

But Walgreens wasn't exactly right around the corner. The whole thing took the better part of an hour, from slipping out of the apartment to pulling in at the curb in front of Shari's. Right behind Deacon's van. I recognized the I ? My POTBELLY bumper sticker.

This wasn't his day for Pete. I knew that. I had double-checked the calendar in the kitchen, to make sure we wouldn't be interrupted.

I moved swiftly up the creaky stairs, hoping to go unheard. The door was still ajar and I burst in to find Shari now wide awake, standing in the front hall in her terrycloth robe. Deacon was fully clothed, in his coat, even, but I couldn't tell if he had just arrived or was making his escape, which I'd thwarted.

"What's going on?" I demanded.

She was glaring at me. So was he.

"You didn't pull the door closed. Pete got out."

"He was out in the hall," Deacon said. He said it the way you might say, He hotwired a Camaro, scored a six-pack and went for a joyride.

I asked Deacon, as politely as I could, what he was doing there.

"She called me. She was very upset. I'm very upset."

Shari's arms were folded tight across her chest. "What were you thinking?"

I peeked around the hall closet door. Pete was curled up in his little bed. "Nothing happened to him. Right?"

She made a noise through her teeth that made me think showing her the rubber drain plug would be pointless right now.

"He couldn't really go anywhere," I said. "He wouldn't go down the stairs, right? By himself, he can't even—"

"He went all the way down the hall!"

"He was right in front of the Koreans," the guy said. "We're lucky we got him back."

I tried to laugh, hoping to get them to join in. "What, so just because they're Korean, they're going to steal your pet pig and eat him? I gotta be honest here, Shari, I think this guy's kind of racist."

"Don't try to—" the guy said. "You know what you did."

"Seriously," I said. "Just because they're Korean?"

Deacon stepped closer to me, raising his voice now. "Oh, right. I'm being racist. Never mind that they said he was 'delicious.' "

Shari waved the air as if dispersing the cloud of testosterone collecting there between us. "No one's saying they would actually do it. But I think maybe you hoped they would do it."

"What?" I couldn't believe this. "What exactly are you accusing me of here?"

Deacon spoke for both of them. "We are saying maybe you knew that you left the door open."

I opened my mouth and a hollow sound came out. I tried again. "Please. It's not like I'd—" I bent to pet the pig. "I like Pete, I wouldn't—"

Shari swatted my arm. "Don't you touch him."

With a squeal and surprising agility, Pete hopped up and trotted around the corner into the bedroom, where he wedged himself behind the dresser. He looked like a kid, escaping the domestic ruckus. Shari and Deacon rushed to his aid, baby-talking, calling him Petie, telling him that everything was OK, that his mommy and daddy were there and no one was going to hurt him. They looked just like they did in that Christmas photo, kneeling down like that, cradling Pete between them.

I could hear their voices all the way down the stairs, cooing over their baby, telling him he was going to be fine, the big bad man was leaving. As I pushed through the door to the street, I heard a laugh from Shari: Pete had made an adorable sniffle or Deacon had said something cute. Who knew, who cared?

I stood on the sidewalk, wondering where I could go at this hour. Then I got in my car and I drove to Denny's and sat in a big open booth all by myself and ordered something they called a Moons Over My Hammy and when it came I asked the waitress, with my best big friendly smile, if I could also order an extra helping of bacon on the side.

"So," I said. "You own a pig." "Half a pig, really. Joint custody."

This grunting was disapproval, giving the new guy the thumbs-down. I was an interloper, a defiler.