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: : : FLETCHER'S LYING ON THE COUCH at Cassandra's place studying a plastic robot. He's exhausted. This seems to be the way lately—he goes in to school, teaches a couple of classes, and by the time he gets home, or over to Cassandra's, he doesn't want to do much beyond lie on the couch in exactly this way. He tries to attribute his weariness to various passing factors—seasonal change, Daylight Savings Time, a night of restless sleep—although if he's to be totally honest he has to acknowledge that feeling worn out in the evenings is increasingly the norm, not the anomaly. So this is the famous loss of vitality, he thinks. It gives him an understanding of why people in their thirties like cocaine. It makes him wonder idly where he could acquire refined trucker pharmaceuticals. He imagines himself submerged in a haze of chemical fire, revising, collating.
Leander sits on in the center of the floor, moving his own plastic robot through the different geometrical areas on the circular rug. When the robot moves to the maroon area from the mustard one Leander changes the pitch of his drone, to signal some transition between imaginary terrains.
Cassandra sits in the corner, at her desk, her hair bunched in her fists. She's looking through a stack of job listings that she's printed out from somewhere online.
Leander launches his robot from the rug's central orange circle and zooms over towards Mom. Drills the robot into her thigh. Without looking, she reaches down and turns him around so that he's facing the opposite direction.
—Go play with Fletcher, she says.
The robot roars across the room and jams into Fletcher's ribs. —You make that guy fly, Leander says, pointing at the robot in Fletcher's hands. —Then my guy will fly and shoot your guy. He points at the robot's empty grip-shaped hand. —Pretend that he has a gun, he says. —He had a gun but it's lost, he says.
—How about I just have this guy stand here, says Fletcher. He sets his robot up on the flat table of his chest. —You can shoot at him and he'll try to dodge. He moves his guy back and forth, to indicate.
—No, Leander says. —Make your guy fly.
—Leander, Cassandra says. —Remember what we talked about? About playing with others?
Leander's face goes blank.
—If Fletcher wants to dodge—or whatever—you have to let him, she says.
Leander doesn't give any sign of assent beyond lifting the robot in the air and recommencing with the soaring noises. Fletcher takes this as a good sign, and he moves his guy back and forth, demonstrating a readiness to dodge. Leander brings his robot down for a better shot, landing it forcefully on Fletcher's crotch.
All of Fletcher's internal organs seem to simultaneously contract. He winces, tries not to barf. A grunt escapes. Cassandra hears this, and turns around in time to be able to infer what happened. —Leander! she says. —Go play in your room.
—I don't want to, Leander says.
—I don't care, Cassandra says. —Daddy's tired; he wants to rest. He'll play robots with you another time.
—That's not fair.
—Leander, she says. —We're not going to argue about this. Go.
She gets up and begins to haul Leander off by his arm. —No, Leander wails, dropping to his knees. Fletcher watches this. The pain pulsing through him has diffused to the point where it's tolerable and so he manages to muster some degree of pity for Leander. He wants to say it's okay. He wants to say he was just playing. He wants to change his mind, get up off the couch for a bit, sit on the rug, play robots. He wants to make his guy fly. He wants to be the good dad, not the guy who Leander will remember as the guy who sat by passively while he got dragged out of the room.
Leander cries no again, but Cassandra's grim face shows that the time for negotiation has passed, if indeed it ever existed. Now it is simply a question of force. Fletcher watches. He gets a glimpse of Leander's contorting features and in them he sees hatred—that special hatred that belongs only to the young, that wells up in a child's primal foundry and just pours straight out through the face, untrammeled and clear. No filter yet within them can hold it back. Fletcher feels startled to have it aimed in his direction. He has nothing to counter it with. There is nothing left within him that can match its purity, nothing within him that has not, at this point, been compromised.
Dear God he's tired.
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