Sing You Home

“Oh, yeah,” I say, although I do not even own a passport. “A dozen times.”

She pushes her pen and newspaper toward me. “Can you show me what my name would look like in Egyptian?”

Irv sets the martini down in front of me. I start to sweat. It would be so easy.

“I’m Sally,” the woman says. “S-A-L-L-Y.”

It’s amazing what you’ll do when you want something bad. You are willing to do anything, say anything, be anything. I used to feel that way about drinking-there were things I did to get cash for booze that I am sure I’ve blocked out permanently. And I certainly felt that way, once, about having a baby. Tell a stranger the details of my sex life? Sure. Jab my wife in the ass with a needle? My pleasure. Jerk off in a jar? No problem. If the doctors had told us to walk backward and sing opera to increase the chance of fertility, we would not have batted an eyelash.

When you want something bad, you’ll tell yourself a thousand lies.

Like: The fifth time’s the charm.

Like: Things between Zoe and me will be better once the baby’s born.

Like: One sip isn’t going to kill me.

I once saw a TV documentary about giant squid, and they filmed one shooting its ink into the water to get away from an enemy. The ink was black and beautiful and curled like smoke, a distraction so that the squid could escape. That’s what alcohol feels like, in my blood. It’s the ink of the squid, and it’s going to blind me so that I can get away from everything that hurts.

The only language I know is English. But on the edge of the newspaper, I draw three wavy lines, and then an approximation of a snake, and a sun. “That’s just the sounds of the name, of course,” I say. “There isn’t really a translation for Sally.”

She rips off the corner of the newspaper, folds it, and tucks it into her bra. “I am totally getting a tattoo of this.”

Most likely the tattoo artist will have no idea that these are not real hieroglyphs. For all I know, I might have written: For a good time, call Nefertiti.

Sally hops down from her stool and moves onto the one beside me. “You gonna drink that martini or wait till it becomes an antique?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I say, the first truth I’ve offered her.

“Well, make up your mind,” Sally replies, “so that I can buy you another one.”

I lift the martini and drain it in one long, fiery, mind-blowing gulp. “Irv,” I say, setting down the empty glass. “You heard the lady.”

The first time I had to leave a semen sample at the clinic, the nurse stepped into the waiting room and called my name. As I stood up I thought: Everyone else here knows exactly what I’m about to do.

The literature Zoe and I had been given said that the wife could “assist” in the sample collection, but the only thing that seemed more awkward than jerking off in a clinic was having my wife in there with me, with doctors and nurses and patients just outside the door. The nurse led me down the hallway. “Here you go,” she said, handing me a brown paper bag. “Just read the instructions.”

“It’s not so bad,” Zoe had told me over breakfast. “Think of it as a visit to Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”

And really, who was I to complain, when she was getting shots twice a day and having constant pelvic exams and taking so many hormones that something as simple as crossing the street could make her burst into tears? By comparison, this seemed like a piece of cake.

The room was freezing cold and consisted of a couch that had been covered by a sheet, a TV-VCR, a sink, and a coffee table. There were some videos-Pussy in Boots, Breast Side Story, On Golden Blonde-various issues of Playboy and Hustler and, weirdly, a copy of Good Housekeeping. A small window that looked like it belonged in a speakeasy was to the right-this would be where I left the sample when I was done. The nurse backed out of the room, and I pushed the lock in the door handle. Then I opened it, and pushed it again. To make sure.

I opened the paper bag. The sample cup was enormous. It was practically a bucket. What were they expecting from me?

What if I spilled?

I started to leaf through one of the magazines. The last time I’d done this, I’d been fifteen and had shoplifted the December issue of Playboy from a newsstand. I became incredibly aware of how loudly I was breathing. Maybe that wasn’t normal. Maybe that meant I was having a heart attack?

Maybe I just needed to get this over with.

I turned on the television. There was already a video playing. I watched for a moment, and then wondered if the person waiting on the other side of the trapdoor for the sample was listening.

It was taking forever.

In the end, I closed my eyes, and I pictured Zoe.

Zoe, before we’d started talking about a family. Like the time we’d gone camping off the grid in the White Mountains, and I woke up to find her sitting on a boulder playing a flute, wearing absolutely nothing.

Afterward, I stared at the sample in the cup. No wonder we couldn’t get pregnant; there was hardly anything there, at least in terms of volume. I wrote my name and the time on the label. I slipped the sample into the drop-off zone and closed the door, wondering if I should knock or yell or somehow let the technician know that it was ready and waiting.

I decided they’d figure it out, and I washed my hands and hurried into the hallway. The receptionist smiled at me as I left. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

Seriously? Shouldn’t that phrase be banned from use at an IVF clinic?

As I walked to my car, I was already thinking of how I’d tell Zoe what the receptionist had said. How we’d laugh.

When I wake up, I am lying on a pillow covered in purple fur, on the floor of a bedroom I do not recognize. Gradually, ignoring the sledgehammer at my temple, I sit up and see a bare foot, flame red polish. My tongue feels like it’s carpeted.

Staggering upright, I look down at the woman. It takes me a full minute to remember her name. I can’t really recall how we got here, but I do have an image of another bar, after Quasimodo’s, and maybe even another after that. I can taste tequila, and shame.

Sally is snoring like a longshoreman-the only saving grace. The last thing I want to do is have a conversation with her. I tiptoe out of the room, holding my pants and my shirt and my shoes in a ball at my groin. Did I drive here last night? I hope like hell I didn’t. But God only knows where I left my car.

Bathroom. I’ll go to the bathroom, and then I’ll sneak out of here. I’ll go home and pretend this never happened.

I pee and then wash up, dunking my head under the faucet and scrubbing my hair dry with a pink hand towel. My gaze falls to the counter, to a foil snake of condoms. Oh, thank God. Thank God I didn’t make that mistake, too.

Get a grip on yourself, Max, I say silently.

You’ve been here before, and you don’t want to go back.

Everyone messes up from time to time. Maybe I’ve had a few more instances than others, but that doesn’t mean that I’m down for the count. This wasn’t falling off the wagon. It was just… a speed bump.

I open the bathroom door to find a toddler sucking his thumb and staring up at me, with his older sister-a teenager-standing just behind him. “Who the fuck are you?” she asks.

I don’t answer. I run past them, out the front door, down the driveway that does not have my car in it. I run all the way out of this suburban cul-de-sac in my boxers. At the juncture of the state highway, I throw on my clothes and dig in my pocket for my cell phone, but the battery’s dead. I keep running, certain that Sally and her children are going to chase me down in the minivan that was in the driveway. I don’t stop until I see a strip mall. All I need is a phone; I’ll call a taxi service to get me back to Quasimodo’s to pick up my car (which is, I hope, where I left it) and then I’ll take refuge at Reid’s house.

It’s not really my fault that the first place I find open is a restaurant whose proprietor is doing inventory on a