and nobody expected home for hours?
Danny sat down and pretended to read the paper, then glanced
up at the sound of Tom pouring the milk. How old is he? Thirty-
The way she smiles, the things she says
53
four minus twenty is fourteen. Danny curdled at two disparities: it’s
not fair that he’s no longer fourteen himself, and when he was fourteen he sure didn’t look like Tom, tall and muscular. Tom’s already taller than Danny.
Tom crossed the kitchen with a mug of Milo in each hand.
Danny opened his mouth, and took the first breath for saying ‘I
said I didn’t want one,’ but stopped in time, because Tom walked
right past him, out of the kitchen, towards his bedroom.
Danny looked down at the paper. He’s got a girl in there. Maybe
he wants two mugs himself, maybe he’s a Milo junkie. Don’t be
stupid and naive, he’s got a girl in there, how could you not have
guessed? He’s just been fucking her, that’s why he’s naked, idiot.
He’s fourteen and he’s got a girl in his room. Are you angry,
jealous, proud? All three. You were nineteen w'hen you finally
fucked his mother, years after all your university friends had
tertiary syphilis. Fourteen. Shit. You couldn’t have at fourteen.
Physically impossible, admit it.
Danny stared and stared at the paper. Should he go to bed, pretend he didn’t know, never say anything about it? Should he walk casually into Tom’s room and ‘accidentally’ discover her? Don’t be a
bastard, why try to embarrass him? He’ll tell you if he wants to tell
you. W hat did you expect, did you want him to say, as soon as you
walked in, ‘Hi, Dad, there’s this friend of mine, this girl, here, in my
room actually, and, in case you’re wondering why I’m standing
here naked in the kitchen, it’s because I took all my clothes off
before I fucked her and I haven’t got around to putting any back on
yet, largely because I’m very seriously entertaining the idea of fucking her again in the not too distant future.’
Danny made himself a cup of coffee and stared at the paper some
more. He felt wretched, guilty, old. Old enough to have a virile son
is too old to be virile yourself, it stands to reason. Well, to common
sense. Danny thought: ‘Shit, what is this? All the pap-psychology I
never believed in, castration fantasies and phobias and Oedipus
complexes; he hasn’t even got a mother around to kill me for. What
a load of garbage. I don’t feel threatened. Just that now he’ll be
more like a younger brother. I can bring women home myself now.’
Who? Whores? Nobody else will go near you. Cheap ugly w'hores a
million times older than Tom’s girlfriends.
‘Dad, this is Zoe.’
‘Hi.’
She had short brow'n hair, a beautiful smile, she didn’t seem
54
Greg Egan
nervous at all. Only Danny was nervous, it wasn’t fair. How old was
she? Was it illegal if they were both under age? Who went to gaol
then? The parents?
They both wore jeans and tee-shirts, identical. She was as tall as
Tom. H er right hand rested on his right hip. Tom smiled amiably.
‘Grin bashfully,’ thought Danny. ‘Look sheepish, look almost winking. I need you to.’ Tom did nothing of the sort. They pulled out chairs and sat at the table, Zoe to Danny’s right, Tom to her right,
facing Danny.
‘Hello, Zoe. How are you?’
‘Fine, thanks.’
(‘Do you know anything about fertility control?’)
(‘Don’t be nervous, Dad, I had a vasectomy years ago. All my
friends had it done too. We figured that we didn’t want any paternity suits cramping our style.’)
‘Do you go to school with Tom?’
‘No. We met at the Uni.’
Tom was a cybernetics prodigy, and spent many hours after
school and on weekends at the University, because the facilities at
the high school were ‘hopelessly primitive, months out of date.’
Danny knew as much about computers as was absolutely essential
for his job: you hit one key and they played a Bach fugue, you hit
another key and they played ‘Holiday in Cambodia’, then you drew
a squiggle on a screen with your fingertip and the machine combined the three somehow into ‘the song’, which emerged as a
