Page 87 of Gifted & Talented

“As for you,” I began, returning to the subject at hand and to the wording I’d found strange until I’d gotten distracted by the name of his theoretical child, “what do you mean youmightbe having a daughter?”

“Oh. Well, my…” Arthur looked around, checking for any eavesdropping reporters before turning back to me. “My girlfriend might be pregnant.” He told me briefly about Yves and Philippa, about the way they’d met, about how much he loved them both, and the thing about Philippa being “beautifully difficult,” like that was a novelty and not just a description of his sister. Or me.

“You really have a type,” I sighed.

“Yves is different, though,” he said, defensively. “And so is Gillian.”

“Yeah, but they’re not the ones you’re considering part of the problem, are they?”

“I don’t think that’s fair.” Arthur sounded troubled, his brow knitting pensively, precisely the way Monster’s had done at the earlier prospect of switching to another activity. “And it’s not like it sounds, you know, the whole sleeping-with-other-people thing. It’s not an affair, not in the clichéd sense. It’s different.”

That sounded a lot like what everyone who sleeps with other people says and I told him so.

“Well, okay, fair.” Arthur did feel more shameful than he usually did, explaining his lifestyle to me. Normally, people (chronically online people, but I digress) just accepted that it was progressive and sexually fluid and entirely within his rights as a human being who wanted nothing more than to combat loneliness, to be alive, which Arthur usually felt a sort of smugness over when it came to his own precocious liberality.

But I wasn’t really moving my face very much, and he had the sense that I had probably had polyamorous relationships of my own—which I had, for a brief period of time, not that it’s worth getting into. The point is that Arthur could tell while he was talking to me that everything he claimed about the forward-leaning grandiosity, the utterprofundityof love in his relationship was, you know, bullshit-resembling.

“You always make me feel so conventional,” Arthur told me, apropos of nothing, while scraping a hand through his hair. We had been silent for a while at the time, because Arthur was thinking about what I thought of him and I was thinking about whether Monster could be convinced to eat tacos for lunch. And, yes, I was also thinking about Meredith.

“I don’t think I’m the one making you feel that way,” I pointed out.

“Because it’s not like I’m cheating on my wife,” he insisted.

“Sure,” I agreed.

“She knows about it. She supports it. Our relationship is, you know—”

“Progressive?” I guessed with an undertone of irony.

Arthur heard it. He turned to me with a sudden burst of energy.

“Iamprogressive,” he said.

“Okay,” I agreed.

“It’s not my fault I can’t get anything done. Politics is fucked, Lou, it’s justfucked. Sorry,” he said to Monster, who had certainly heard worse fromhis own mother’s mouth. “I came into office and I tried to change things but two years is… it’s nothing,” he ranted, beginning to pace across the wooden trail. “It’s just absolutely nothing—in two years I accomplished fuck all and now they’re pulling me from office and I’ll just forever be thisblip. Just some nepo baby who said oh sure let’s regulate magitech and let’s get rid of the guns and let’s make things safe for immigrants and of course I’m pro-choice and then in the end, I’m just, like, another guy.” He said that last word with unbelievable derision, which was so funny to me that I snorted a laugh. “What?” he demanded, hurtfully. “And anyway, what do they want me to do? ‘Nepo baby’ this, ‘nepo baby’ that—should I just kill myself, is that the only way to solve the ethical issue of my existence? Should I stop breathing, is that what they want?”

He was breathing hard, like he was on the verge of tears.

“Whoa, whoa,” I said loudly, pretending to cover Monster’s ears. “Profanity is one thing, but I draw the line at intrusive thoughts. And anyway,” I added, changing tack because Monster was annoyed that I was doing something other than helping him on the balance beam, “I think we may have stumbled upon the source of your little death problem, Congressman Wren. You’re just sick to death of other people.”

He exhaled, deflating like a balloon.

“That’s not true.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I like the idea of people.”

“Unfortunately, though, we’re not an idea,” I said. “Nor are we agoodidea. Not the time for it, but my personal theory is that we’re God’s starter universe. He seems to have messed up somewhere, maybe even right away, with the chromosome problem where all mammals sunburn, and now I think He’s not onlynotan interventionist, He’s actively left the building. He’s like, you know what, bro? I’m trying again! Milky Way can suck a dick, the end.”

“Ball!” said Monster excitedly.

“Is this your way of telling me I’m being overdramatic?” asked Arthur, with a deep sigh.

It wasn’t, but since he seemed a little more subdued, I felt I was achieving a breakthrough, however incidentally.

“So what if you’re just some guy, huh?” I asked, poking him in the shoulder. “What’s wrong with being ‘some guy’?”

“I said ‘another guy,’ but thanks for making it unbelievably worse,” said Arthur.

“Why? I’m just some lady. I’m some fuckingmom, Arthur, I mean. Can you imagine?”

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