"I know who you're describing."

Annie doubted it very much, but for a moment she wondered whether Malcolm was going to produce somebody for her-maybe a recently divorced son who wrote poetry and played in the Manchester Philharmonic.

"Really?"

"The opposite."

"The opposite of what?"

"Of Duncan."

It was the second time recently that Malcolm had made an observation that could, presumably wrongly, be described as perceptive. Tucker was the opposite of Duncan. Duncan had no children of his own, no creative bent, and he hadn't lived, not even a little. Or at least, he had never thrown stones at a noted beauty's window, had never been an alcoholic, hadn't toured the United States and Europe, hadn't thrown away a God-given talent. (Even Tucker's way of not living could be described as living, if you had a crush on him.) Was that it? Was she in love with Tucker because he was the opposite of Duncan? Was Duncan Duncan in love with Tucker because he was the opposite of Duncan? In which case Annie and Duncan had both managed to create an empty space, a complicated one, with all sorts of tricky corners and odd bumps and surprising indents, like a jigsaw piece, and Tucker had filled it precisely. in love with Tucker because he was the opposite of Duncan? In which case Annie and Duncan had both managed to create an empty space, a complicated one, with all sorts of tricky corners and odd bumps and surprising indents, like a jigsaw piece, and Tucker had filled it precisely.

"That's stupid," she said.

"Oh," said Malcolm. "Oh well. It was just a theory."

Dear Annie,

"What do you do if you think you've wasted fifteen years of your life?" Are you kidding me? I don't know if anyone ever told you, but I'm pretty much the world expert on this particular subject. I mean, obviously I've wasted more than fifteen years, but I'm hoping you'll overlook the extra and look upon me as a kindred spirit anyway. Maybe even your guru.First of all, you have to get that number down. Make a list of all the good books you've read, movies you've seen, conversations you've had and so on, and give all of these things a temporal value. With a little bit of creative accounting, you should be able to reduce it to ten. I've got mine down to about that now, although I've cheated here and there-I included the whole of my son Jackson's life, for example, and he's been at school and asleep for a lot of the time-wasting years.I'd like to say that anything that comes in around a decade you can write off for tax purposes, but that isn't actually the way I feel. I'm still pretty sick about what I've lost, but I only admit it to myself late at night, which is probably why I'm not the best sleeper. What can I tell you? If it really was wasted time-and I'd need to examine your diary pretty carefully before I could confirm that for you-then I have some bad news: it's gone. You can maybe add a little onto the other end by giving up drugs, or cigarettes, or by going to the gym a lot, but my guess is that those years after the age of eighty aren't as much fun as they're cracked up to be.You know, from my e-mail address, if nothing else, that I have a thing for Dickens-I'm reading his letters at the moment. There are twelve volumes of them, and each volume is several hundred pages long. If he'd only written letters, he'd have had a pretty productive life, but he didn't only write letters. There are four volumes of his journalism, too, big ones. He edited a couple of magazines. He squeezed in an unconventional love life, and a few rewarding friendships. Am I forgetting anything? Oh, yeah: a dozen of the greatest novels in the English language. So I'm beginning to wonder whether my infatuation is caused, in part at least, by him being the opposite of me. He's pretty much the one guy whose life you could look at and think, man, he didn't mess around. That happens, right? People get drawn to opposites?But there aren't many people like old Charlie. Most humans don't get to do work that's going to last. They sell shower curtain rings, like the John Candy character in that movie. (I mean, the rings might last. But they're probably not what people talk about after you've gone.) So it's not about what you do. It can't be, can it? It has to be about how you are, how you love, how you treat yourself and those around you, and that's where I get eaten up. I used to spend a lot of time drinking and watching TV, not loving anybody, wives or mistresses or kids, and there's no spin I can put on that. Which is why Jackson is such a big deal. He's my last hope, and I'm pouring everything that's left in me through the spout on the top of the little guy's head. That poor kid! Unless he surpasses the combined achievements of Dickens, JFK, James Brown and Michael Jordan, he'll have let me down. And I won't be around to see it anyway.

TuckerDear Annie,

I'm sending this e-mail about five minutes after the last one. My advice, it now occurs to me, was entirely worthless and borderline offensive. I suggested that we can redeem wasted time by cherishing and nurturing our children, but you don't have any children. Which is one of the reasons why you feel you've been wasting time. I'm not quite as perverse or obtuse as this might seem, but I can see that my pitch to be your guru could have gone better.I'm coming to London next week, by the way, in unhappy circumstances. Are we getting on fine as we are? Or would you like a drink?

It was the part about opposites that did it, of course. She didn't know who or what she had fallen in love with, but she was as lost and dreamy and helpless as she'd ever been in her entire life.

eleven.

How can you just lose a baby?" said Jackson. "It hasn't even been born yet. It can't even go anywhere."

His eyebrows were high above his eyes, suggesting stifled mirth; the boy was pretty sure there was going to be a punch line to this joke, Tucker could tell, but he wasn't going to laugh until he'd been given permission.

"Yeah, well. When people say that someone's lost a baby . . ." He hesitated. Was there an easier, gentler way of doing this? Probably, but fuck it. "When people say that someone's lost a baby, it means the baby died."

The eyebrows fell.

"Died?"

"Yeah. It happens sometimes. Quite a lot, actually. Lizzie was unlucky, because usually it happens really early on, when the baby isn't even really a baby. But hers was a little bit older."

"Is Lizzie going to die, too?"

"No, no. She'll be okay. At the moment she's just very sad."

"So even babies die? Babies that haven't been born? That really, really sucks."

"It really, really does."

"Except," said Jackson, brightening, "except, you're not going to be a granddad."

"Not . . . Not yet, no."

"Not for ages. And if you're not going to be a granddad yet it means you might not die yet." And with that, Jackson started running up and down, whooping.

"Jackson! Stop being such a jerk!"

Tucker only rarely shouted at him, so whenever he did, the effect was dramatic. Jackson stopped dead, covered his ears with his hands and started to cry.

"That hurt my ears. A lot. I wish you'd died instead of that poor little baby."

"You don't mean that."

"This time I really do."

Tucker knew why he'd been so angry: it was guilt. The postponement of grandfatherhood hadn't been the first thing he'd thought of when Lizzie's mother called to tell him the news, but it had certainly been the second, and the space between the two hadn't been as respectful as he would have wished. He'd been reprieved. Someone up there had wanted to extend his-not his youth, of course, nor even, let's face it, his prime, but his pre-grandfatherly state. It wasn't what he'd wanted. He'd wanted Lizzie to be happy, to have a healthy child. But every cloud, and so on.

Meanwhile Jackson's sobs had stopped being angry and bitter. They were now pitiful and remorseful.

"I'm really so, so sorry, Dad. I didn't mean it. I'm glad the baby died and not you."

Somehow kids could never get it quite right.

"Anyway, I suppose we'll have to go to London and see Lizzie, right?"

"Oh, no. I don't think so. That isn't what she'd want."

It hadn't even crossed his mind. Was that bad? Probably. "Probably" was usually the answer to this particular question, in his experience, if the question was self-directed. But Natalie would be around, and Lizzie was close to her stepdad . . . There was no need for him to sit by her bedside not knowing what to say.

"She'd want to see you, Dad. I'd want to see you if I was sick."

"Yeah, but . . . You and me, we're different. I don't know Lizzie as well."

"We'll see," Jackson said.

Cat came over to take Jackson out for pizza. She'd offered to take Tucker out, too, but he'd declined-the boy needed some time alone with his mother, and anyway, Tucker wasn't ready to play happy modern fractured families yet. He was old-fashioned enough (and simple enough) to believe that if a man and his wife could share a pizza, then they could share a bed. He was, however, somewhat disconcerted to realize when he saw her that he could have done it, sat in the restaurant eating and chatting; this particular wound had taken only a short time to heal. A while back, he might have taken this as an indication of increasing psychic health, but in his experience anything to do with getting older rarely indicated good news. Presumably, then, it was doleful proof that he couldn't bring himself to give much of a shit about anything anymore. She was a good-looking woman, Cat, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what had pulled him toward her. And he could no longer re-create in his mind the circumstances that had led to their marriage, or the production of Jackson, or even the stormy weather of the last year or so.

"I suppose you'll have to go to London," Cat said, when he told her the news about Lizzie.

"Oh, no," he said, although the "Oh" was beginning to sound superfluous and phony, even to him. This time it had crossed his mind. "I don't think so. That isn't what she'd want." Why not stick with a winning formulation?

"You think?" said Cat.

"It's not as if we're close," said Tucker. "She wouldn't be expecting me to fly across the Atlantic just to be useless."

"Nearly right," said Cat. "She'd be expecting you not to."

"Right," said Tucker. "Which is what I just said."

"No. It wasn't. Your way of putting it suggested that she wouldn't care one way or the other. My way-her way-is to think the worst of you. You don't know much about fathers and daughters, do you?"

"Not a lot, no." Not as much as he should, anyway, seeing as he was the father of a couple of daughters.

"And she flew all the way here to see you when she found out she was pregnant. There's something going on with her."

He finished buttoning up Jackson's coat and kissed him on the top of his head. Of course, the one kid who he hadn't fucked up was the one kid whose offspring he wasn't likely to see.

He phoned Natalie as soon as Cat and Jackson had left.

"When do you think you'll be coming to see her?" said Natalie.

"Oh," said Tucker, and this time the word was airier. "As soon as I can get things organized here."

"But you are coming? Lizzie didn't think you'd make the effort."

"Yeah, I guessed she'd think that. I know her better than she suspects. And she doesn't know me at all."

"She's very angry with you right now."

"Well, I guess this sort of thing stirs up all sorts of inner shit."

"I think you have to get used to it, as your children start to have children. It makes them see how absolutely hopeless you were."

"Great, I'm looking forward to it."

It was only much later, after he'd put Jackson to bed, that he realized he didn't have the money to go to London. He didn't have the money to go to New York City, was the truth of it; Cat was helping him out for the time being. What would come after that was a mystery, although not one he was particularly anxious to solve. Nobody would let Jackson starve, and that was the only thing that mattered. He called Natalie back and told her he'd been unable to make child-care arrangements.

"His mother won't look after him? Gosh."

That "gosh"-so English, so poisonous.

"Of course she would, but . . ."

"But what?"

"But she's away. On business."

"I thought she did things with yogurt."

"Why can't yogurt involve travel?"

"Wouldn't it go off?"

At least he could still feel the open, festering exit wound that Natalie had left, so that was something. That combination of bitchiness and stupidity was as hard to bear now as it had been back then.

"So bring him. I'm sure Lizzie would like to see him. She seemed quite taken with him."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Well, it's the school year, and . . ."

"Lizzie said you and Cat were breaking up."

"That's something that . . . that seems to have happened, yes."

"So you can't afford to fly to London."

"It's not that."

"So you can afford to fly to London."

"If, you know, push came to shove."

"That's exactly where push has come."

"I can't afford to fly to London, no. There is a little cash-flow problem at the moment."

"We'll pay."

"No, I can't . . ."

"Tucker. Please."

"Fine. Thanks."

Having no money wasn't so bad, really, as long as he never did anything other than go for coffee with Fucker once a month or so. Adults, however, especially adults with several children, sometimes found themselves in a position where they needed access to a fund more bountiful than the bedroom change jar that departing ex-spouses had generously left behind. Natalie's husband did something . . . Actually, Tucker had no real idea what he did. He could remember that it was something he disapproved of, or had belittled, anyway, so he probably did something that involved going to meetings, possibly while wearing a suit. Was he an agent of some kind? Movies? It was coming back to him now. Simon (?) headed up the London branch of some unspeakable Hollywood agency. Maybe. He was a no-talent leech, anyway, Tucker was sure about that. It was easy to feel superior to these people while you were the talent. But when you stopped being the talent, then they were just grown-up people with a job, and you were the hopeless case who was going to have to accept charity from them.

"Do you know people in London?" said Natalie. "Is there somewhere you can stay?"

"Yeah," said Tucker. "I mean, she's not right in the center, but we can come in on the train or whatever."