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By Root 1018 0

to press an ear against, the heart beating beneath, if he listened closely, as amazing as surf in a shell. Watching his wife approach their bed made his heart race with anticipation, Alice edging toward it like a child at a pool, her plunge requiring both an inner negotiation and a logistical plan: a knee up first and then a slight fall to her extended hand, the pose held as she timbered slowly toward him, her landing setting the springs creaking, her weight indenting her side of the mattress and rolling him ever so slightly toward her. She put her arm over his chest, the limb so heavy that it was like catching a log. They watched TV, not a fat person in a single commercial unless the advertisement was for losing weight, the same silence between them as intense for commercials with infants (diapers, detergents, toys). Their marriage, David occasionally reflected, could be measured as a sequence of late-night television shows: Love Connection, Letterman, The Daily Show, someone somewhere writing the show that would carry them through the rest of their lives. “David,” she often asked before he drifted off, “are you going to sleep?” He was. She was too. Did he turn off the television? Did she?

Then it was morning again.

Naturally there were deviations from this routine—he working late, she at a meeting—but he forgot each of them as soon as the next one came. He tested her to ensure he wasn’t alone in this. “I don’t remember either,” she said, and laughed. And of course there were significant events in their lives—that is, history—but for some time now it seemed that recalling them, or plucking a coherent narrative from this mindless flow, this endless reloop, required the mental effort of reconstruction, a focused recollection of things prior to this long tranquillity that were overwhelmed by and set apart from the here and now. But perhaps that was exactly the task at hand, David thought, the only way out. For underneath this there were unspoken truths, things that had happened or they were waiting for that comprised the very bedrock of their marriage, which went beyond issues and that David boiled down to three:

She was fat.

His book wasn’t done.

And Mr. Peanut.

In the summer of 2004, their eighth year together, he and Alice began to talk about having children.

David remembered the year clearly because Spellbound Games, the company he and Frank Cady started, had just released their first shooter, Bang You’re Dead! for play on Xbox. Within months, it was a hit worldwide. Negative press was a huge boon. CNN did a story on it, as did 60 Minutes and the New York Times. He and Frank were even interviewed on Larry King Live. The game, rated M for Mature, took place in a sprawling public school, its rules the same as the game from childhood. When you spotted an opponent, you pointed your hand—an imaginary gun—and fired and said, “Bang, you’re dead!” and he or she mimed a dramatic death. In David and Cady’s version, you began by choosing your avatar’s clique—the Jocks, the Goths, the Cheerleaders, the Nerds, the Geeks, or the Teachers, to name a few, each having specific defensive powers and various forms of agility and mobility. Then you chose your own appearance, from hair color to race to body type. Finally—and this was what really made it great—you chose your weapon, your gun: Laser-Pointer Hand, Spitball Hand, Static-Electricity Hand, Rubber-Band-Gun Hand, Cootie Hand, Acid Hand, Dry-Ice Hand, Bunsen-Burner Hand, Taser Hand, Mace Hand, and Dragon-Touch Hand, each appendage popping on and off like a prosthetic, as outsize as Popeye’s forearms, mechanized and interchangeable and carrying, of course, limited ammunition or charges, multiple hands to be amassed and replenished over the course of the game, which took place during a single school day. The goal was to wipe out every other clique until you ruled the school. The graphics were cartoonish, pure Super Mario, the carnage spectacular, especially with the Dragon-Touch Hand (risky because you had to get close enough to touch your opponent, fabulous because his or her