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: : : AFTER WORK, JAKOB HEADS FOR the subway, same as he does every other night, but the closer he gets to the entrace the slower he walks, until he's standing right there at the top of the steps, totally still, thinking, watching the other commuters flow underground, past him, on their way home.
He's wondering if maybe there isn't some errand or something that he could do, while he's out. They need toilet paper at the house and there's a Walgreens a few blocks away; he could go over there. He tries to think of other things he might be able to pick up from the Walgreens, or other errands he could run in this part of town. He turns from the entryway, trying dimly to think of other shops in the area, tries to figure out where, exactly, he's going.
Normally after a day at Fieldhammer he's pretty eager to get home, where he can take his tie off, wash his face, sit on the couch, turn on Newshour with Jim Lehrer and sort the mail and maybe drink a beer. These things a little boring—he'll be the first to admit that—but they're the things he likes to do. It feels good, in a way, to be at a point in his life where he can feel free to be boring.
He sometimes feels like Freya doesn't get that. He feels like she's still concerned about wanting to be cool, like she misses being twenty-one or eighteen, and sometimes he feels like it rankles her, to see him settling in to a comfortable boring life, and that to think of herself settling into that kind of life with him kind of scares her, maybe. He can see this fear manifest itself in some of the things she does sometimes (he thinks here, once again, of the time she kissed Fletcher on New Year's Eve).
This is part of why he was drawn to her in the first place, he realizes—she was The Record Store Girl, with the badass tattoos and all that, all full of menace and promise, it seemed like dating her would be exciting, a way to get outside of his boring life, an adventure. But now he's in a place where he doesn't want adventure any more. Now he's in a place where he wants to start thinking about having a kid. And he's not sure he likes the idea of having a kid with someone who doesn't feel comfortable with the idea of being comfortable.
It occurs to him, as he turns the corner, that the reason he's not going home is less because he wants to do errands and more because he just wants time to himself. He spent all day administering a round of interviews and he knows that when he goes home Tim and Freya will be there. He won't be able to do his normal post-work relaxation ritual because Tim will probably be in the living room playing the Playstation 2, which he brought along from home.
Jakob's actually been a little bit glad for the presence of the Playstation 2, because it works as a bonding object, giving the two of them something to do together without actually having to talk to one another. Which is frankly a relief— Jakob didn't realize just how little he has to say to someone who's eighteen until he had one living under his roof for two weeks. It's been fun, also, to see the amazing stuff that videogames can do these days—he hasn't really kept up since the days of his old Nintendo system. But tonight he's not in the mood for killing virtual hookers.
What is he in the mood for?
There are restaurants down here, world-famous steakhouses he's never tried. The River East 21 is only a couple of blocks away, he could walk in and select from a dozen movies—he could go waste a few hours on Catwoman if he chose. He could walk up to the Virgin Megastore on Michigan and inspect new CDs and books. He could go all the way across to the lake and stare broodingly out across the waters.
He sits down on a marble slab in front of some corporate tower and opens up his briefcase. He looks in a file, takes out some papers, reviews the dates listed on them. He begins to think about what his day will look like tomorrow.
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