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Wrong Brother Right Bed • by Jace Wilder

Eighteen Months

Glassware

Marc POV

Eighteen months married, and Jamie has, evidently, become a man who picks out glassware.

That is — that is the development of the year, in our marriage. Jamie is in the kitchen at six on a Friday evening in his work-from-home sweats and a soft white t-shirt, unboxing a set of four heavy crystal tumblers he has, over the course of three weeks, been researching the way he researched the apartment we did not move out of, the way he researched the wedding bands, the way he is now researching baby names — quietly, in spreadsheets, without telling me the longlist for the first six weeks because he wanted to be sure of his picks before he gave me an opinion to push back against.

The glasses arrive in a box at five-fifty.

He carries the box in from the porch with the careful concentration of a man defusing something, and he sets it on the kitchen island, and he looks at me at the dining room table where I am, technically, finishing an elevation, and he says:

“Marc.”

“Yeah.”

“They’re here.”

“Okay.”

“Come open them with me.”

I close the laptop.

I close the laptop because — eighteen months in — I have learned that when Jamie Sullivan stands at our kitchen island holding a box he has been thinking about for three weeks, the elevation can wait. The elevation can always wait. The elevation has been, for eighteen months of nights and weekends, the second-most-important thing in this apartment, and it is going to keep being the second-most-important thing for the next forty years.

I get up. I cross the kitchen. I stand at the island opposite him.

He is — God — he is bright. He is bright in the kitchen lamplight with the box-cutter in his hand and his hair in his face and his ring catching the under-cabinet LEDs, and he is opening this box with the focused happy attention of a man for whom acquiring four glasses is, evidently, a project of personal significance, and I am thirty-four years old and I am — I am, in this exact unbothered Friday evening moment, full. Just full. Just — happy.

He gets the tape off. He pulls the cardboard flaps open. He lifts a glass out of its tissue paper.

He hands it to me.

I take it.

It is heavy.

It is — God — Jamie has bought us good glassware, the glassware of a serious person, the glassware of a man who has read three articles about lead crystal versus tin crystal versus machine-pressed and who has, by his own quiet research, decided we are the kind of household that drinks whiskey out of a glass that weighs as much as a paperback. The cut is clean. The base is thick. It catches the light when I turn it.

I look at him over the rim.

He is watching my face.

He is bracing.

I — okay. I have to be careful here. He has been bracing about small choices since he was seven years old. He has been bracing about flannels in the morning before a hard meeting. He has been bracing about toothpaste brand in the aisle at Wegmans with me three weeks ago, looking at me sideways, waiting for me to weigh in on whether the upgrade from the regular to the slightly-more-expensive whitening-but-not-too-whitening was an acceptable line item in our shared budget. He braces. It is a thing he does. It is a thing I am, slowly, over eighteen months of marriage, unbracing him from, by going first, by saying yes baby before he has finished asking, by — yeah.

I look at the glass.

I look at him.

I say: “Jamie.”

“Yeah.”

“This is the best glass I have ever held in my life.”

He laughs.

He laughs, real, wet, small, with relief, and his shoulders drop a fraction, and he says: “Yeah?”

“Yeah, baby. Look at it.”

“It’s — they were a lot, Marc.”

“How much.”

“I — I don’t want to —”

“Jamie.”

“Forty-six dollars. Each.“

“Okay.”

“They — they were on sale. I waited. I — the original price was —”

“Jamie.“

“Yeah.”

“They’re four glasses for our home. That we are going to have for thirty years. That is — that is a hundred and eighty-four dollars, prorated against thirty years, baby — that is fifty cents a month for a beautiful object I am going to use to drink whiskey with you on Fridays for the rest of my life.”

He looks at me.

He bites his lower lip.

He says — small, almost too quiet — “Yeah?”

“Yeah, Jamie.”

“Okay.”

“Open the rest.”

He opens the rest.

He unboxes the other three glasses with the slow attention of a man who has, evidently, been waiting for permission to enjoy a thing he already bought, and he sets them in a row on the granite, four of them, heavy, cut, catching the light, and he stands back, and he looks at them, and he says — to the glasses, not to me —

“They’re so pretty.”

I cannot.

I — I cannot, currently. I round the island. I come up behind him. I put my arms around him from behind — both arms, my chin on his shoulder — and I put my mouth at the back of his ear and I say, low:

“They’re beautiful, baby. You picked good ones.”

He leans back into me.

He puts his head back on my shoulder. He closes his eyes.

He says: “It’s so stupid that this — this makes me this happy.”

“It is not stupid.”

“Marc.”

“It is not stupid. You bought us something nice for our house. You took your time. You thought about it. You — Jamie — you have, over the past eighteen months, picked out every nice thing in this kitchen. The mugs. The knives. The cutting board. The — the salt cellar with the little wooden lid. I have done none of it. None. I have made coffee in mugs you picked. I have cut chicken on a board you picked. I have washed our hands at a sink with the soap you picked. I am — I am living inside your taste, Jamie, and I love it, and I love that the glass is a hundred and eighty-four dollars, and I love that you waited for it to go on sale, and I love that you brought it home in a box and let me unbox it with you. I love the glass. I love you.“

He turns in my arms.

He looks up at me.

He kisses me.

He kisses me slow.

He kisses me the way he kisses me on Friday evenings now — which is the way I used to kiss him, which is the way he learned, which is the slow open careful start-of-the-night kiss, his hand under my jaw, his other hand at my hip, and the kiss is — God — the kiss is a kiss with a Friday in it. The kiss has a plan. The kiss has an unhurried lay-of-the-land that says we have all weekend, we have nowhere to be, I do not have to rush you.

I let him kiss me.

I let him kiss me for a long minute in the lamp-lit kitchen with four hundred-and-eighty-four-dollars-worth of glassware on the granite next to us, and when he pulls back his eyes are dark.

He says, quiet: “Pour the whiskey.”

“Yeah?”

“In the new glass. Two of them. The whiskey from your dad.”

“Jamie.”

“Yeah.”

“You want to break in the glasses.”

“I want to break in the glasses.”

“Okay.”

“And then I want to break in you.“

I — Christ.

I close my eyes for half a second.

I say: “Jamie.”

“Yeah.”

“It is six on a Friday.”

“I know what time it is, Marc.”

“We have not eaten dinner.”

“I made a reservation for nine. I am — I have been planning this. It is — it is the eighteen-month.”

“The eighteen-month.“

“Yeah.”

“Eighteen months of what, Jamie.”

“Eighteen months of being married, you ridiculous architect.”

I look at him.

He is looking at me.

He has — God — he has an anniversary in him, he has been counting months, he has been planning a Friday in March around an arbitrary number that is, evidently, significant enough to him to merit new glassware and a nine PM reservation and the specific tone in his voice he is now using which is the I am taking you upstairs in twenty minutes tone, the tone he developed on our wedding night and has, since, deployed sparingly, on Sundays mostly, and once in Italy on the third morning, and tonight, in our kitchen, on a Friday in March, eighteen months after.

I — I.

I cannot.

I say: “Jamie. Sweetheart.“

“Yeah.”

“Pour the whiskey yourself. I will be in the bedroom.”

“Marc —”

“I will be — Jamie. I will be in the bedroom. Now. If I stay down here we are not making the reservation. If I go upstairs I — I have a — I have a fighting chance.“

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

He laughs.

He laughs into my shoulder. His hand tightens at my hip.

He says, against my throat: “You go upstairs. Pour two whiskeys. I will be up in five.”

I go upstairs.

I sit on the edge of our bed.

I sit on the edge of our bed in my Friday clothes — sweatpants, a soft t-shirt I have been wearing for two days, bare feet — and I look at the rug, and I do — I do the breathing. The thing I taught Jamie. The four-and-six. The thing that, eighteen months in, I have begun to do not because I am about to resist him but because I am about to let him have everything, which is, evidently, the thing I have to do the breathing for now.

I have been letting him have everything for ten months.

I have, technically, still topped him three times in the last ten months — birthday morning, the Thursday of our first wedding anniversary, and the night in November when his last book deal closed and he came up the stairs of the apartment vibrating like a tuning fork and I, because the man needed holding, not being held, took him to bed and held him with my whole self the old way for one slow hour. We have, in our marriage, the full set of options. We deploy them as the night calls for. We do not, either of us, have a problem with this.

But on a Friday in March at the eighteen-month mark, with new glassware downstairs and a nine PM reservation, what I am, currently — what my body is currently aiming for — is about to be on my back under him with his hand laced with mine on the pillow above my head, the way I taught him, the way he has, evidently, made his own.

The bedroom door opens.

He comes in.

He has both glasses. He has one of the new ones in each hand, the heavy crystal cut catching the lamp on the nightstand, and the whiskey in them is — God — it is the whiskey my father gave me for our wedding, the bottle that has been in our kitchen for eighteen months, the one we have been opening, judiciously, on specific nights. He has poured maybe two fingers in each. He hands me one. He keeps one.

He sits next to me on the edge of the bed.

He clinks the rim of his glass against mine. Soft. The crystal makes the small expensive sound crystal makes.

He says: “Eighteen months.”

“Eighteen months.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

We drink.

The whiskey is — it tastes the way it always tastes. The glass changes nothing about the whiskey and everything about the experience of drinking it. I look at him over the rim of the glass and he is looking at me, and we sit on the edge of our bed sipping a sixty-dollar pour out of a forty-six-dollar glass and neither of us is saying anything, and after about a minute he sets his glass on the nightstand.

He puts his hand under my jaw.

He turns my face toward him.

He says: “Marc.”

“Yeah.”

“Drink the rest of yours.”

“Bossy.”

“Drink the rest of yours.“

I drink the rest of mine.

He takes the empty glass out of my hand. He sets it on the nightstand next to his. He looks at me. He looks at me with the calm careful steady Jamie face — the face he has, over eighteen months, made his own, the face that does not ask permission to be here, the face that says I have you, you do not have to do anything, I am driving the next two hours, this is my hour, you are mine — and he says, quietly:

“Lie back.”

“Lie back.”

I lie back.

I lie back on the comforter — the new one, the heavier one he picked out in February, the one I, for the record, also love — and I look up at him at the edge of the bed, and he stands up. He stands up slow. He pulls his t-shirt off over his head. He drops it on the rug. He gets out of his sweats. He gets out of his boxers. He is — God — he is, eighteen months married, at thirty, in the lamp-lit dim of our bedroom, the most beautiful man I have ever seen, and he is standing at the foot of our bed, and he is looking at me with his eyes dark and his mouth parted, and he says:

“Get up.”

I get up.

He takes my t-shirt off. He undresses me slow — the way I taught him, the way he has made his — sweatpants, boxers, the soft socks I am, somehow, still wearing in March in the apartment. He drops everything on the rug. He looks at me in the lamplight, naked, on the edge of the bed, and his face does the yeah face, the wedding-day version, the version he gave me at the rose arbor, except for eighteen months of marriage layered over it.

He says: “Look at you.”

I close my eyes.

“Open them, Marc. Look at me.”

I open them.

“You are the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life.”

“Jamie —”

“I am going to keep saying it. Until you believe it. Look at you.“

He kisses me.

He kisses me slow and deep and long, his hand under my jaw, his other hand at my chest, and he eases me back down onto the bed. He is over me. His knee is between mine. His mouth has moved to my throat. He is — God — he is taking his time. He has all the time. He is using my own techniques on me. He is doing what I did to him in November of our first year, the make me forget night, the night he told me we were okay no matter what Connor said. He is doing it back. He is using it as love. He is using it as thank you.

He moves down my body.

Slow.

So slow.

He kisses my throat. The ridge of my collarbone. The scar on my left collarbone from the bike accident at nineteen — he kisses the scar, deliberately, the way he has, since he discovered it existed eighteen months ago, made a habit of kissing it specifically, and he says against the scar — quiet, soft — hi. He moves down. He kisses each of my ribs. He kisses the bottom edge of the architectural tattoo on my left side, the one his thumb traced on the very first night he had ever touched a man, and he kisses along the line of it, slow, the entire length of the tattoo, his lips warm and dry against the ink. He keeps going. My stomach. The line of hair below my navel. The crease of my hip. The inside of my thigh.

I am — fuck.

I am, by minute eight of being in his bed under him, completely undone.

I am breathing through my mouth. My hand is — at some point my hand has gone into his hair. I do not, technically, remember moving it. It is in his hair. He looks up at me from the inside of my thigh. His green eyes in the lamplight. His mouth a fraction open.

He says, low: “Marc.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay.”

“Yeah, baby.”

“Use your words.”

I laugh.

I laugh, wet, broken, into the pillow, because use your words is the line I, for two and a half years, used on him, and he has — sometime between then and now — taken it, polished it, and put it back in my mouth, and I am thirty-four years old and I am laughing on the edge of crying with him on the inside of my thigh, and I say:

“I’m okay, Jamie. I am — I am very okay. Please.”

“Please what.”

“Please — please —”

“Use your words, Marc.”

“Your mouth. Please. Jamie.“

“Yeah.”

He takes me in his mouth.

I — God.

I close my eyes. I close my eyes because if I keep them open I am going to come in thirty seconds, and I am going to come in thirty seconds because he has been studying my body for two and a half years and he knows — he knows — exactly what I like and exactly how slow to go and exactly when to use his hand and exactly when to use just his mouth, and he is using the entire kit on me on a Friday night in March, and I am — God — I am loud, I am making the small high sounds I taught him to make, I am — yeah.

He brings me to the edge.

He pulls off.

He kisses my hip.

He says, against the skin, soft: “Slow down, sweetheart. We’ve got time.”

I make a wrecked sound.

I make the wrecked sound and my hand in his hair tightens, and he says, into my hip: “Look at me.”

I look at him.

“Hands above your head. On the headboard.”

I put my hands on the headboard.

The way I made him, two and a half years ago, the night I edged him for the first time. He has, evidently, kept the move. He is, evidently, deploying it on me now. I grip the headboard. The wood is cool. He climbs up the bed. He kisses me. Hard. His tongue in my mouth. The taste of me on his mouth, and the whiskey, and — yeah.

He kisses me for a minute.

Then he moves back down.

He brings me to the edge again.

Pulls off.

Again.

Pulls off.

By the third edge I am — Christ — I am crying, the way I cried the first time he edged me on a Saturday morning in our second year, the way he used to cry, the way, I now understand, was never a weakness in either of us but is, evidently, what happens when the body has too many feelings and they have to go somewhere, and Jamie is — Jamie crawls up the bed on the third edge and he gets his face six inches from mine and he says, quietly:

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“You okay.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what.”

“Yes, Jamie. I am — yeah. I am — please.”

“Please what.”

“Please. Whatever you want. Whatever — Jamie. Please.”

“What do you want.”

“I want — I want you. I want you in me. I want — Jamie — I want all of it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Use your words, Marc. Tell me.”

“I want you to fuck me. Slow. The way I — the way I do it. I want — I want your mouth on my throat the whole time. I want you to tell me I’m yours. I want — I want everything.”

He looks at me.

He looks at me for a long second.

Then his mouth does the small private smile.

He says: “Good.”

He gets up off the bed. He goes to the nightstand. He gets the bottle and the condom. He comes back. He sits on his heels between my knees and he looks at me, naked, in the lamp-lit bedroom we have lived in together for two and a half years.

He says: “Knees up. Heels on the bed. Hips where I can see them.”

I — I move.

I move because his voice is doing the thing. His voice is doing my voice, the architect voice, the voice he, evidently, learned by listening to me tell him what to do for nine months in this exact bed and decided to pocket and use later. He is using it now. He is using it on me. I am — God — I am gone.

He lubes his fingers.

He works me open slow.

He works me open the way I worked him open the very first time on a Sunday night in November in our second-floor bedroom of our first apartment which was, also, our current apartment. He works me with one finger for a long time. Two. Three. He is talking to me the whole time. Breathe for me, Marc. Yeah. There you are. Look at me. You’re doing so good. So good. Look at me, baby. And I am — I am — I am whimpering, the way he used to. I am — I have one hand still gripping the headboard and one hand fisted in the sheet at my side. My other hand is shaking.

By the time he is at three fingers I am begging.

I am begging in a voice I have never, in my life, used out loud, the voice he used in November of our first year. Jamie. Jamie, please. Jamie. Please. Please.

He pulls his fingers out. Slow.

He rolls the condom on.

He slicks himself.

He leans over me. He braces one hand beside my shoulder. He uses his other hand to line up. He looks down at me and he says, quietly:

“Look at me, Marc.”

I look at him.

He pushes in.

Slow.

So slow.

He pushes in the way I push in, the deliberate inch-by-inch slow press that lets the body acclimate, and I — God — I gasp, sharp, my hand on the headboard going white-knuckled, and his face, six inches from mine, softens. He stops. He lets me have a second. He kisses me on the mouth. Slow.

He says: “Breathe.”

I breathe.

He pushes in the rest of the way.

He stops. All the way in. Forehead against mine. He is — he is breathing slow. He is, I realize, holding himself together. He is taking his time because he is making himself take his time. He could move now. He is choosing not to. The discipline I taught him — the slow, careful, deliberate discipline of pleasing somebody with patience — he has internalized, and he is using it on me, and I —

I am crying.

I am crying, quietly, with my forehead against his.

He kisses my temple. He says, against my skin: “Yeah. I know. I know, Marc. I’ve got you.”

“Jamie —”

“Shh.”

“Jamie — Jamie —”

“Shh. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He moves.

Just a fraction. A small slow withdrawal. A slow press back in.

I make a sound.

He kisses my throat.

He moves slow.

He moves slow and deep and steady and his hand has, at some point, found mine on the headboard and laced our fingers, and his other hand is on the side of my face, and his mouth is at the hollow of my throat, and he is murmuring constantly — yours, mine, yours, perfect, look at you, baby, you take me so well, look at you taking me, perfect, perfect, mine — and I am — I am gone, I am completely gone, I am the man on the bed I made him for nine months and he is — he is me, he is the patient, careful, steady, exquisite man over me, and the geometry of our bed is — is what it is, now, what it has been for ten months, what it is going to keep being, and I —

He moves harder.

A fraction.

He says, against my throat: “Marc.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me.”

“Yours.”

“Again.”

“Yours, Jamie. Yours.“

“Whose.”

“Yours.“

“Good.”

He moves harder still.

He gets his hand on me — between our stomachs, his hand finding me, working me in time with how he is moving in me — and I — I cannot — I am —

“Jamie.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m — I’m —”

“Look at me.”

I look at him.

He says, quietly: “Come for me, Marc.”

I come.

I come on his hand and against his stomach and his name is in my mouth — Jamie, Jamie, Jamie — and his hand is in my hair, and his other hand is laced with mine on the pillow above my head, and I am — God — I am crying through it, the soft happy useless tears that I, evidently, do now during sex, the ones that used to be only his and that have, over the course of marriage, become mine too. He works me through it. Slow. His hand moving through it, his hips slowing, his eyes on mine.

He follows me about a minute later.

He follows me with his forehead against mine, with my name in my hair, with his hand still laced with mine, and when he is done he does not move. He stays over me. Forehead to forehead. Both of us breathing hard.

After a long time he says, quiet, against my mouth:

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Marc.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Jamie.”

“You okay.”

“I am — yeah. I am — very okay.”

He laughs.

He laughs once, into my throat. He pulls out, slow. He gets up. He goes to the bathroom. He comes back with a damp towel. He cleans me up — careful, gentle, the way I clean him up — and he gets back into the bed, and he pulls me into him.

I put my face on his chest.

His hand goes into my hair.

We lie like that for a long time.

The clock on the nightstand says seven forty-eight.

We have time.

We have, in fact, all the time in the world.

After a long time he says, into the top of my head: “Marc.”

“Yeah.”

“I — I have to tell you something.”

“I lift my head.

I look at him.

He is — God. He is bright. He is bright the way he was bright at the kitchen island over the glassware, except brighter. He is — he is shining, lying on his back in our bed in the lamp-lit dim of our bedroom on a Friday night in March eighteen months married, and he says — quietly, the calm happy small voice he uses when he is delivering news he has been holding —

“We got the call back.”

I — I.

I sit up on my elbow.

“What.”

“From the agency. While you were upstairs. The — they — Marc — they had — they had a match.“

“Jamie —”

“Yeah.”

“Jamie. Jamie.“

“A baby boy. Six weeks. Healthy. The birth mom — she — she chose us, Marc. From the profile book. She — she liked the picture of us in the kitchen. The one Mom took at Thanksgiving. She — she said those two look like they laugh a lot.“

I — I —

I —

“Jamie.”

“Yeah.”

“Jamie.”

“Yeah, Marc. Yeah.”

“When.”

“They want us to — they want to set up the meeting next week. Tuesday. If — if we are sure. If — Marc. If we are still sure. They — they need to know.”

“We are sure.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Jamie. Yes.“

“You — you have not — you have not even — you have not asked any of the —”

“Yes.“

He looks at me.

His eyes are — God — his eyes are wet. His mouth is doing a small wrecked thing. He is — he is laughing, into the pillow, he is laughing the wet laugh I taught him to laugh, and he says — into the pillow, into my chest, into the room —

“Marc. Marc. Marc.“

“Yeah.”

“We are going to be fathers.“

I — I close my eyes.

I close my eyes against the top of his head and I do not move for a long second, because the word fathers has — God — the word has just landed in our bedroom on a Friday in March eighteen months into our marriage, and I have to take a half-second to feel it in my own body before I can speak.

I open my eyes.

I lift my head.

I look at him.

I say: “Yeah, baby. We are.”

He laughs.

He laughs.

We do not, technically, make the nine PM reservation.

We call Mizzoni’s at eight-forty. Jamie calls. Ren picks up. He says, low and shaking and laughing — Ren, it’s Jamie, listen, we are going to need to push to ten-fifteen, is that — yeah, we — yeah, we just got — yeah, we got the call. Yes. Yeah. The baby. Yes. Ren — — and Ren, on the other end of the line, screams, I can hear it through the phone from across the bed, and Jamie laughs and Jamie cries and Jamie says yes, yes, ten-fifteen, yes, we love you and hangs up, and we lie in our bed for another forty-five minutes naked and tangled and not, technically, talking about anything, just — being in a room together, where we have been being in a room together for two and a half years, except now there is a third person in the room, in some future room, in some future Tuesday, who is going to be six weeks old, and ours.

We get up.

We shower together. Slow. Easy. Jamie washes my hair. I wash his. Neither of us is rushing. We get dressed — clean shirts, the good jeans, Jamie picks out the green sweater I love. We go downstairs. The four glasses are still on the kitchen island. The two we used are on the nightstand. Jamie picks up one of the unused glasses. He holds it up to the kitchen light.

He says, soft: “We bought four.”

“Yeah.”

“We — we are going to have four people drinking out of glasses in this kitchen, Marc.”

I look at him.

I say: “Yeah, baby. Eventually.”

“And — and the — the — Connor will use one when he’s over.”

“He will.”

“And our parents.”

“They will.”

“And — eventually — eventually — there will be a small one in a — a small chair — drinking — milk — out of —”

“Jamie.”

“Yeah.”

“Come here.”

He comes.

I hold him in the kitchen.

I hold him for a long time. I hold him with my face against his hair and his hand fisted in the back of my shirt, and we are — we are not crying, exactly, but we are also not, technically, not crying, and after a long while he pulls back and he wipes my face and I wipe his and he says — laughing, wet, bright —

“We have to go to dinner.”

“We have to go to dinner.”

“Get in the car.”

“Yeah.”

We go to dinner.

We eat at Mizzoni’s at ten-fifteen. Ren, when we walk in, cries, full-body, into Jamie’s neck, and I watch them at the door for a full thirty seconds before either of them lets go. We sit in our table. Ren brings the wine she always brings. We do not, tonight, drink much of it. We pick at the bread. We hold hands across the table. We talk in low voices about names and Tuesdays and rooms and cribs and the office at the end of the hall that has been Jamie’s writing room and that is going to, evidently, in some near and approaching future, become a nursery.

We get home at midnight.

The four glasses are on the kitchen island.

The bed upstairs has not been made.

We do not make it.

We get into our bed in the clothes we have been wearing, both of us, and Jamie puts his face into my chest, and I put my arms around him, and we lie there in the dark, and after a long time he says — into my chest, into the dark, into the rest of our lives —

“Marc.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve got time.”

I close my eyes.

I say: “Yeah, Jamie. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

We sleep.

We sleep all the way through.

In the morning the four glasses are still on the kitchen island, the sun is coming through our curtains, and somewhere in some building in some part of the city a six-week-old boy is, evidently, asleep with people who love him, and on Tuesday we are going to meet him.

We’ve got time.

— Jace Wilder