Keep On Doing What You Do

by SekritOMG

Kenny is anything but conventional; Craig is married. These are issues that are best worked out at the school Christmas pageant, yes/no? For RandomGhostie.

This was written for RandomGhostie on DeviantArt, who wanted to read Kenny/Craig for the SP-Artists Secret Santa 2010. Figuring out how to do it was pretty difficult, because I've felt like I don't have a good handle on writing Craig for a long time, and I wasn't sure what kind of relationship Kenny and Craig would have, or if they'd even like each other. So this is basically what I've come up with, and sure enough, it's basically the same story I keep writing, just about two different people. (And, well, Stan and Kyle, because I love writing about them.)

---

At 7:15 the alarm went off, blasting its flavorless noise into Craig's ear from where it lay on the nightstand. Nightstand, not really — more like an old army trunk Kenny had found in some abject street, taken home and stuck next to the bed. On it sat a pile of yellowing papers, the gaudy papier-mâché sphere-like thing that Craig hesitated to call a lamp (although it did light up), and Craig's cell phone, his de facto alarm.

Kenny himself didn't believe in alarm clocks.

So Craig rolled over, grasping for his phone, just one more makeshift thing in his life that was supposed to fulfill one purpose and was slowly proving itself an unacceptable stand-in for the other. Craig hated frivolity and didn't like the found army-trunk-patchwork-lighting aesthetic, either. But Kenny's sheets were simple, beige organic cotton, and from this side of the bed, he looked to Craig to be rather alluring — his crooked shoulder blade sticking up in the air, hair frightful, sheets barely covering his ass.

Then, of course, Kenny stirred, rolling flat onto his back. "Oh my god," he murmured, in the sleepiest possible way. "What the fuck?"

By now, Craig was already up, trying to source a pair of socks from Kenny's sock drawer — sock trough? Whatever this thing on the floor was, full of socks — and locate his shoes from where Kenny had deposited them the night before, as a prelude to what Kenny called "some good old-fashioned toe-sucking," like anyone ever did that. Craig was pretty sure that no one ever did. He certainly never had. It seemed to him to be baroque and needless. Craig's erection had been visible and viable, just waiting while Kenny sat there, licking his feet.

And now it was this morning, so Craig said, "Good morning," wondering if Kenny was going to get out of bed, or if the taste of Craig's feet lingered in his mouth.

"Morning?" Kenny replied. It wasn't a greeting.

"Yes, morning." Craig bent over to retrieve his brown loafer from behind the hamper — could you call that thing a hamper? It was actually an old suitcase, a vintage one with peeling green spotted leather and a dozen faded stickers. But it was where Kenny threw his dirty clothes — eventually, anyway. Craig felt dizzy and sat down, trying to wedge his loafer on — then he remembered he wasn't wearing pants. Where were his pants? He decided to sit still for a minute. "It's almost 7:30," he said, hoping this was quiet so he wouldn't wake the neighbors through the paper-thin walls. "Are you getting up?"

"No," Kenny said, although he did indeed inch himself up onto his elbows and look around the room. "Where are you going so early?"

Craig rolled his eyes. "Work."

"Oh, yeah." Kenny was awake enough now to know it was a dumb question. "That alarm of yours is fucking terrible."

"If you just had an alarm, it wouldn't matter." Under the bed, but only just, Craig narrowed in on his second shoe. He also realized he was sitting on his pants. "Are you going to work today?"

"Of course." Now Kenny sat up, letting the sheet fall away to reveal most of his body, narrow and peachy and covered in watercolor patches of scars, bruises, tattoos. The scars were long-term investments, some dating back to grade school; the bruises recent reminders of time well-spent. The tattoos were just impulse purchases. One of them was a faded green M, which stood for any number of things; others weren't even discernable to Craig. He couldn't read that language. "Are you staring?" Kenny asked. A brief smile began to form on his lips.

"No." Craig shook his head, and got up to put on his pants. "Not really."

"Uh huh. Well, um…" Kenny interrupted himself by yawning. "Shit, it's really early."

"It's not early. It's not even close to early." When Craig had to drive up to the city for work, he got up at 5:30. That was early. This mindless shit with Kenny was luxuriant. "Do you need a ride? Because I can give you one—"

"We have an editorial meeting at 1," Kenny said, sounding almost sad. "So, uh, I guess I won't go in until then."

Craig shook his head, stepping into first one shoe, then the other. "Christ. How do you people get anything done?"

"When we're going to press we work for two weeks straight, no sleeping," Kenny reminded him.

"Well, how often is that, twice a year—"

"Four times a year."

"Oh." Craig pulled a sweater right over his T-shirt. In reverse, he'd slept in it, fucked in it, eaten in it, worked out in it, worked in it, put it on yesterday morning at 6 a.m. in South Park, the light of the morning shining on his children's faces as they shuffled into the kitchen for breakfast before school. It had been a curious journey for this shirt, and soon it would go into the wash. But now it had new purchase, because Craig was too lazy to dig through Kenny's shirt trough. It was too intimate. They didn't share like that.

"So if you don't need a ride," he said, straightening things out, "I guess, um—"

"We could get lunch," Kenny suggested.

"My lunch break's half an hour on Wednesdays," like Kenny didn't know.

"I'll come to the office."

"It's, um." Craig sighed. He sunk down into the bed, where Kenny wrapped him back up in blankets and pulled him into the mattress. "That's not really going to work out," Craig mumbled.

"Of course." Kenny's words came in between pauses where he nipped at Craig's ear and jaw line: "So what are you doing tonight? I don't have any plans. Saturday's the party, but I have to cover a performance, some thing tomorrow, remind me to check my datebook" — scrawled on a lined yellow notepad — "so that's not great for me."

"Tonight's, um." Craig cupped the back of Kenny's head. It amazed him how real it felt, how clean his hair was, and yet how thick. "I'll sleep at home tonight."

"Dinner with the family?"

"Um, no." Craig paused. "I mean, yeah. Holiday pageant."

"Oh, right!" Kenny bolted up, smacking himself on the forehead. "Shit, I forgot."

"How'd you forget? You weren't invited."

"Invited? I mean, it's a Christmas pageant. And it's always the Wednesday before Christmas."

"How do you know that?"

Kenny wrinkled his nose. "I only went to school there my whole life," he said. "I do remember shit, you know. My brain function isn't impaired."

Sometimes Craig wondered if it was, though. "Well, that's where I'll be." He bent over to kiss Kenny on the top of the head, which he felt was a nice way of saying goodbye for the day — the next several days. It was such a solid, literary thing to do. Of course, Kenny had to draw his head back and force a kiss out of it — a real kiss, with tongues and spit and every pathetic ounce of longing he could muster. Not that Kenny was pathetic. Just tired.

"Have fun at work," he said, flopping back down into the sheets. "I'll call you if I get bored."

"Don't call me. I'm working."

"Fine. I won't."

Craig stood in the doorway — well, Kenny lived in a pretentious loft-condo, so really it was just a big room with a fireplace divider, but anyway — gawking at him, hating to go.

"Kenny," he said, softening as he did, his posture relaxing and his hands going slack. "I — uh. Do you know that I love you?"

"I was starting to think so, maybe," he said. He seemed not at all shocked. It wasn't the reaction Craig was looking for. "Kyle kinda thinks you do, the staff is ambivalent — they've never even met you—"

"Well, it's true. I was — waiting for Christmas to say it or something, but — I do. I don't know if I'll see you, though. So. But don't talk about me anymore. I don't like that. Especially not with Kyle. I think he talks to Bebe."

Kenny stared at him for a moment. Then: "Okay, well, I love you too." Evasive, but reassuring. He crawled back underneath the covers. "I gave you a fucking key so lock the door this time."

"Okay." Craig just stood there, waiting to leave. Kenny started snoring again, and then he left.

It was almost 8 a.m.

XXX

Kenny had paid his way through college as a male escort. Everyone knew this. He'd written a book about this experience: Conversations with Exquisite Corpses. So everyone really knew. The worst thing was, Kenny hadn't any clue about exquisite corpses. He felt it was self-referential, and ironic, because most of the seedy people he met though this lifestyle were empty shells themselves, dead on the inside and resistant to hardship, fabulous simulacra of people. Then someone told him it was a totally different thing. Then he was like, oh. His book wasn't a run-away best-seller, but people really liked it. Hardly anyone in lit circles had read it, but most people lied and said they had. The New York Time Book Review said that:

With total sincerity, Mr. McCormick writes of 'deaths' — by his own hand, by others', purposeful and completely accidental. As a metaphor, it seems overwrought. But little by little, the narrative strips away in poetic handfuls, revealing the 'death' as a coping strategy. In selling his body for remuneration as an 18-year-old, Mr. McCormick learned to subsume himself in the erotic reality of his actions in order to deal with the psychological ramifications of breaking a central tenet of society in order to become one of its members. 'The little death' is not a new euphemism, but it is a handy one. If this book had been anything other than deadpan, aping a sincere tone, it would have been just another salacious fabrication confected for commercial peddling. It is the esoteric synesthesia (a reference emphasized by the title) of death that makes this book not only readable, but pithy and knowing.

Of course, Kenny had been entirely serious. The gruesome misunderstanding of death as some kind of fucked-up literary device annoyed him; the idea that they were reading the esoteric into the plainest possible factual report of his years 18 to 22 made him want to burn every copy of the thing. He had sex for fucking money, is what he did. It was dangerous and sexy and he thought maybe someone might want to read about it. Instead, everyone thought he was a fucking aesthete genius.

Kenny's boyfriend at the time was a sandy-haired real estate magnate from glittering Los Angeles, who thought Kenny was just the cleverest, most impressive thing he'd ever allowed to plow up his asshole. They'd met when Kenny was waiting a table, and Jack was passing through from LAX en route to his property in Vail. A torrid little two-year affair; nothing more complicated. So when Kenny was offered a sizeable parting gift as alimony, he took it and ran as far from book publishing as possible. Exquisite Corpse was founded a month later at Kyle's dining room table.

Kyle was good with projects, had a knack for forcing them to happen. He wrote the original website (now revamped without frames thanks to an influx of new capital) and maintained a well-tread blog on the site. It was Kenny's money, his fuck-toy money, that put the first two issues on the newsstands of independent bookshops; a year later they bumped it up to four. Now they were funded by advertisements, pay-screen content, federal grants, generous donations. True, they mostly worked with freelancers. Kenny would have liked to have given more people full-time jobs. But the greatest thrill of Kenny's short life came when he picked up a copy of the Denver Post and laughed, aloud, in his corner office, at the end of an editorial:

We do wonder why Mr. McCormick feels Denver needs a queer arts publication, let alone two queer arts publications, bundled together under the same ridiculous title, a callback to his own underwhelming and mostly invented autobiography. But then, we are dealing with a publisher who felt compelled to write his own life story at the age of 22.

A fair enough criticism, to which Kenny has replied, in print:

It has come to my attention that members of the Post editorial board feel there is no need for a queer arts and lifestyle publication, either of the online or semi-annual paper variety, in Denver. I think anyone who questions the validity of thought for its own exercise is probably too bored to fuck, and anyone too bored to fuck is too lazy to think this. So if you think this, please do yourself (and us) a favor and go fuck yourself. Moreover, everything that's recorded in my book truly happened. It seems to me that some people want to define "having happened" as an ephemeral idea, and that's their prerogative. It's my only hope in producing such a publication that, as the literal center of the country, Denver's queer community wakes up and looks around to see what else is out there. I think my creative partner Mr. Broflovski will agree with me, although he assures me that he disavows my "vulgar language" and wishes I had "let him handle this."

XXX

Kenny liked going to work, because his name was on the door and that gave him an immense amount of pride. Kyle rarely came in anymore, being stuck up in the mountains (and long having hyphenated his last name), baking PTA brownies and chairing committees with names ending in "awareness." He liked to work from home, whereas Kenny felt working from home defeated the purpose of having a job. He'd decided ages ago not to be a kept boy, and he wasn't going to live like one. That Craig kept pretending he didn't consider this a real job both delighted and terrified Kenny.

(It did occur to Kenny, just briefly as he drove to the office, palming the clutch, that it was possible Craig was not even pretending. This thought caused Kenny's heart to jump in his chest as he dropped a gear.)

Arriving at a quarter to 1 p.m., Kenny was trailed down the corridor to the conference room by his administrative assistant, a shy girl one year out of undergrad who didn't know what the hell she wanted to do with her life, but she knew how to file and she kept the coffee warm while they were working long nights. She also made sure they had enough printer paper, sent out memos, counted receipts, and answered the phones. Anything else Kenny told her to do, really.

"Any phone calls?" he asked, not so much because he cared about phone calls — more because he had heard important business types in films ask this question with this sort of inflection so often and with such conviction that he just felt pressured to inquire.

"Well, yes," she answered, struggling to match his gait. "Some fundies have called about the cover."

"What's their problem with it?"

She paused. They were now standing alone in what constituted a hallway, although the offices were divided by panes of lavender glass. (Whoever they were renting this space from really knew how to decorate. Kyle had found it; it appealed to his inner New Jersey lawyer.) "I mean, it's the Virgin Mary enthroned on a seat made of naked women, legs splayed, wearing dominatrix combat boots."

"That's an entire cache of pointed art historical references," Kenny tried to explain. "If you're familiar with Bosch—"

"We're all familiar with Bosch," she scoffed.

"Fine, so the fundies. Who else?"

"No one important. Just advertising."

"Well, that's good. Advertising is great."

"Well, I mean…" She paused. "I don't want to be rude, sir, but, like — maybe some advertisers don't want their businesses represented in a publication with lesbian Mary on the cover?"

Kenny looked at her. He thought about this. He said, "You don't have to call me sir."

"Okay," she said, gulping down her anxiety.

"I mean, you don't have to worry about the content. Let me worry about the content."

"What about advertisers?" she asked.

"Oh. About that." He scratched his head. "Yeah, I don't know, Kyle can handle it. Um, forward all business inquiries to Mr. Broflovski."

"Okay," she agreed.

"And I need a coffee. Something foamy because I feel jolly. The least healthy coffee you can find out there."

"What's so jolly?" she asked. "Sir—I mean, um—"

Kenny smirked at her youth, her reluctance to impress him with obnoxiousness. She was good, which was why he had kept her around the past few months, but he didn't see her becoming a friend. Which was odd — Kenny wanted everyone to be his friend. He was only what, 8 or 9 years her senior? Contemplating this, he figured maybe it was time to stop befriending 22-year-old girls. Anyone he could call a 'girl' was probably someone he shouldn't be hanging around with.

"Well, the holiday party is on Saturday night," he said. "That's kind of jolly, yeah?"

"I guess." Her voice became very tight. "It's at your apartment, right?"

"Right," he said. "You coming?"

Her voice shrunk further, growing another octave. "I guess."

He slapped her on the shoulder. "Good. Get me my coffee. Please. Something festive. Here." He dug a wad of singles out of his jacket pocket, and laid it in her palm. "Use the rest to buy yourself a coffee, if there's extra. I'm in a great mood, a really good fucking mood."

"Oh, that's good." She nodded, crumpling the bills up in her sweaty grasp. It seemed nervous, not intentional.

Kenny leaned in, conspiratorial. He knew she was his employee, not his friend. But here she was, and he wanted to tell her — not her, really, just someone. "He said 'I love you,' " Kenny whispered, but it was a stage whisper, meant to be overheard.

"Ah, okay. That's — that's good? I guess? Um — congrats — no — what am I supposed to say, like, what do I even say—"

"And tonight I'm going to a Christmas pageant."

"Great," she said, trying to sound really into this. "I'm sure that'll be fun."

Kenny didn't know if it would be fun — but it was certainly going to be interesting.

XXX

After the meeting, Kenny found his phone ringing off the hook.

"Why are advertisers calling my house?" Kyle didn't sound pissed about this — just curious.

"Yeah, I don't know, man," Kenny lied. "But, good morning."

"Mais, non. It's after lunch."

"Really?" Kenny turned to the clock. It was, actually, 2 p.m. "Well, I'll tell you what I think, I think advertisers are trying to get you at home because you're not in the office."

"I'm busy today," Kyle shot back.

"You're busy every day. You're never here. The fucking phantom publisher of Exquisite Corpse."

"So I don't know if you know this," Kyle began, by way of answering a question no one had asked him, "but tonight is the fucking school Christmas pageant, and I'm not even kidding, I have to make a snowflake costume."

"Sounds adorable."

"Ugh, sure, adorable when I finish the thing and get it on him" — he was Kyle's 4-year-old son, well-known to Kenny as just another pronoun, the pride and joy of the Marsh-Broflovski family. "If you'll think back seven months, Stan's fucking parents got me this sewing machine for my birthday, remember, but here's the thing — I haven't used it yet."

"Right."

"So Benji" — that was the little boy's name — "asks me, 'aren't you going to ever use that sewing machine we got from grandma,' I don't know how he remembers this shit, he's brilliant. I was going to cut a snowflake out of poster board, but then last night at about 11 I got this idea, why not kill two birds with one stone and sew the thing, right? Because the last thing I need is for him to go blabbing to everyone that I never use this amazing sewing machine."

"Okay."

"So I'm trying my best not to get my sleeves caught in it, the machine I mean—"

"You could always take your shirt off, sew naked—"

"—and the fucking phone won't stop ringing. So finally, I pick it up, and it turns out that it's the fucking Colorado gay-friendly business directory, and then it's like, some guy who owns six bars, and at this point I realize I'm out of frost-blue thread—"

"Can't you just use a different color?" Kenny asked.

"No." Kyle sighed. "It has to match the felt. So I'm sitting here, hating Christmas harder than ever, trying to tell these people on the phone I'm not at the office so I can't answer their questions, and finally this one guy, the one who owns six bars, he says to me, 'the woman I spoke to at the magazine said to call this number,' and it dawns on me — either that girl is incompetent and we need to fire her, or you've sicced these people on me to punish me for having a life."

"Kyle, I hate to break this to you so harshly, but grappling with a sewing machine so you can make a tiny snowflake costume doesn't fall into everyone's definition of 'living.' Also, I can't fire that girl. I think she has a crush on me."

"Well, whatever, Kenny, like I care. Point being, tell everyone I'm off for two weeks, until after he goes back to school in January."

"You can't just be off. I don't know how to talk to these people," meaning advertisers.

"It's not hard, you just act deferential, act like the publication is important, like our business is important."

"Well, it's important to me, of course."

"But you have to act as though it should be important to them." Kenny could hear the scowl in Kyle's voice. "Oh, fuck this!"

"Fuck what?"

"Ugh, I dropped a fucking needle on the floor! This is great, just great. I'm so annoyed right now…"

"Craig told me he loved me."

"…all right, I'm getting on my hands and knees to find a needle. Great, just great, this is what I want to do with my master's degree, pick pins off the — excuse me, what?"

"It was almost an aside, you know, he was trying to leave but he said he did, well, he asked me if I knew, and I said, 'Well, Kyle thinks so—' "

"See? I was right. I'm still on the floor. Found the needle — pin, rather, by the way. So you could literally say that I'm floored, although in actuality I just sort of had a hunch."

"How'd you figure that out?" Kenny asked. "Because really, I had no idea."

"A guy doesn't stay over three nights a week if he doesn't really like you."

"Or he could just want to have sex."

"How many people have you had sex with, Kenny? Think about it. Honestly. Don't tell me, just — how many of them did you spend the night with?"

Kenny did think about this. His ridiculous behavior in college, well, that was for money, so he tended to want to roll over, and get the hell away from tricks as quickly as possible. Once Kenny fucked someone for money, looking him in the eyes seemed rather unfair. His ex with the ski chalet, though — they were practically living together. Not that Kenny ever felt the relationship had been deeper than wealthy urbane businessman seeks lithe young blond for mutually beneficial quasi-whoring. Still, there was a kind of fondness there.

So to Kyle's question, Kenny said, "It's true, not many."

"Men, and I do say this as a man, like to get domestic and nest and shit. Granted, the way they do it is different than the way women do it, because, you know, girls like things to be clean or whatever, lord knows, whatever upsets my mother. I think guys just want to roll around in bed with one another, fuck and sleep and fuck and eat and wake up and have a warm body there and fuck again."

"So is that how it is with you and Stan?" Kenny asked.

"Well, it would be," Kyle admitted, "if not for having jobs and life and, you know, our child who needs us to get out of bed and feed him. I'm off the floor now, by the way."

"How is he?" Kenny was genuinely interested in the matter of Benji's well-being, given that Kenny was his godfather.

"He's good!" Kyle said. "Really excited about the pageant. He's never been on stage before."

Kenny snorted at this. Benji's life was a stage. Everyone was constantly applauding him. "I'm sure he'll love it."

"He will. Sadly, my parents won't be there because, you know, Florida, and it's the USGS holiday party tonight, so his other grandparents won't be there, either. It's not like, getting him down or anything—"

"Why don't I come?"

There was silence for a moment while Kyle thought about this. "He'd really like that!" Kyle finally concluded.

They hung up shortly thereafter so Kyle could finish the costume. Leaning back at this desk, Kenny silently gloated.

Benji Marsh-Broflovski and Craig's youngest son were in the same class.

XXX

It was a slow and pointless work day for Craig, director of human resources at a small sports management firm. Craig didn't care for sports, and he wasn't enthusiastic about much of anything at the moment, but generally he found micromanaging people to be a rather satisfying task. At least, assigning concrete valuations to human beings was something he could easily wrap his mind around. He hated when people came to him with problems that lent themselves to an untoward amount of talking, but then, Craig was never in love with his own voice, and didn't much like other peoples' voices, either. Given that work was winding down toward next week's Christmas vacation — for which Craig would receive a generous bonus and four-day weekend — there was little to do, although the incompetent fuckers in management kept making superfluous new hires, which required meetings with accounting to determine how these people would be paid.

Nearing 3 p.m., Craig began to look forward to going home. He dreaded the drive — there was something too precarious about inching up farther and farther into the mountains, a kind of foreboding that sometimes made him feel ill. But he wanted to go home, change out of the clothes he was wearing, have a shower, sit on the couch for a few minutes. He was ambivalent about talking to Bebe — she was a smart lady, did a good job with the children; he cared about her, insofar as he cared about anything. But she wasn't vivacious like she used to be, didn't flounce around the house singing to the kids anymore. Bebe went about her business, wrote short stories she hoped to publish at some point, although she hadn't shown them to anyone, except for a few she let Craig read. He liked them fine. Mysteries bothered him.

Craig had also read Kenny's insidious book, the one about the whoring, and college. He would have liked to have said that he read it as a matter of curiosity, but when the thing came out it was required reading in South Park, Colorado. Craig's university experience had been much different, living in a two-bedroom apartment with the mother of his child, none of the three of them particularly excited about it. That was his oldest boy, Cadence. Stupid name, Cadence, but Bebe came up with this shit and Craig wasn't going to argue with it. Little black-haired Cadence was 13 now, and would begin high school soon enough. Soon, Cadence would be as old as his parents were when they had conceived him. Cadence was quiet and shied away from people. He never locked eyes with Craig, and they never spoke. Sometimes Craig left him 20 dollars on the counter, and Craig didn't know what Cadence did with it. Craig never wrote notes because he hated writing that name, Cadence. Cadence.

The little boy, Thomas, was 4. He was named after Craig's father, and he wasn't yet old enough to develop an aversion to Thomas, but Craig hated extra syllables and never called him 'Tommy.' On one long, trafficky recent drive to work in the morning, Craig had caught himself thinking about the structure of names, and how Thomas echoed the name Kenneth, in that they were both typical, straightforward two-syllable sounds that could be infantilized with an eeeeee suffix or just shortened to one stout syllable. Sitting in a jam on the approach to Denver did this to Craig, made him think about things that he knew he shouldn't think about — men's stocky legs, the horrible choices he'd made, how he didn't even know what to call his children because they never even spoke. He spoke to them through Bebe, who would report back, but usually the news was so uninteresting for Craig that it all failed to stick. Children — how did he have children? He knew, obviously, in theory, but this did nothing to explain where they had come from.

Soon he would have a third child, as Bebe was carrying a girl, due in three months. It sent chills up his spine to think that maybe he had been sleeping with Kenny and making this baby all in the same calendar day. Sometimes it happened. He couldn't help it. It wasn't like Bebe wasn't presciently aware of it. Craig wished she weren't so okay with it.

The phone rang, and Craig was jolted from his thoughts. Perhaps he spoke so seldom because he let his mind do distracting gymnastics. In any case, the phone was insisting itself, and Craig tapped the speaker button and growled out, "Tucker," which was the only way he answered the phone.

"Hi." It was Kenny's sweet voice, sleepy and ambient.

Craig picked up the receiver. "What are you doing?"

"Well, if you must know — I'm sitting here, at my desk, drinking this kind of mocha thing—"

"What are you doing calling me at work?"

"Well." Kenny cleared his throat. "I am calling on work-related business."

"And what business would that be?" Craig asked.

"Well, you haven't replied to my holiday party invitation."

"This isn't work-related. I have work to do," although Craig didn't really have much work to do the week before Christmas, so long as he was waiting on accounting to get back to him.

"Oh, it's work for me. Are you coming to my holiday party? I mean, the Exquisite Corpse Christmas party—"

"I'm hanging up now."

"Just RSVP already! Are you coming, or not?"

Craig signed, leaning his elbows on his desk. "I don't think I can go," he said. "I want to."

"Then just come, Craig, I want you there."

"I have other priorities, other things to do. My children—"

"Bring them."

"—don't know. I'm sorry, I can't run out to the city three days before Christmas to party with you. We need a tree, we need to wrap gifts—"

"Bebe can cover that shit," Kenny suggested. "You get three nights a week. Just, I don't know, you have to come."

"I don't think you understand," Craig explained, in the slowest and gentlest voice he could muster. "Whatever kind of person I am, I'm not the kind of person who abandons his family to go to some party."

"This is not just some party. This is my Christmas party. For my employees. It's what I do. I tell these people about you, but they've never met you—"

"I don't want you telling anyone about me."

"Then what's the point? What's the point of doing — of doing this?" Kenny was exasperated.

"Doing what?" Craig asked. "Having — I'm on a company line. I can't believe you called me at work. Listen, I want to go. I'm sure your party will be okay, or at least fun for you, but have to understand something, which is that I am not perfect, and I can't balance this — this situation — perfectly all of the time. If there was ever a week I should stay home and actually pretend I give a shit about life, it's this week. So, Merry Christmas."

"You could have sent me an RSVP at least, you know." Kenny slammed down the receiver, and Craig was left with the discordant shrill of a dropped connection whining in his ear.

XXX

Small setbacks did not deter Kenny, and he did not consider Craig's refusal to attend his Christmas party a major setback. Craig did not deliberate a great deal; he generally knew what he wanted, and proceeded to procure it. (Or, more likely, disavow it and ignore it.) Just Craig's hesitancy to reply to the immediate invitation was a sure sign to Kenny that Craig didn't plan to be there. The party, however, wasn't for a few days, and Kenny knew a thing or two about psychological warfare.

So he said goodbye to his staff, told them he'd see them tomorrow (or Friday), and hopped in the car, prepared to climb into the mountains in his tin-can stick-shift, a gallon of violent blue de-icing wiper fluid rolling around in his trunk the whole way there. South Park was not exactly far from the city, all things considered, and Kenny figured at this point in his life, he had spent more time in his car than any place else. (To aid this, he could thank his brother, who lived in Cheyenne, and whose family he had been to visit over Thanksgiving, and would probably go back to visit on Christmas proper.) The real problem with driving up to South Park was the condition of the roads, which were comprised mostly of treacherous two-lane highways snaking through ancient overpasses. South Park itself was nestled in a flat-ish valley, ringed by the mountains, which one had to ascend and come out of to reach, and scale again to escape. In high school, it had felt very much penitential, like a punishment. In late December it was icy, and so many drivers fell victim to Park County's narrow slopes that it hardly registered as news.

But if there was one thing Kenny didn't fear, it was dying. He sat in his car, though, fiddling with the radio to distract himself from the real things plaguing him. Christmas music was jangling on at least three stations, but he was less interested in listening than in traveling, checking in with the seek button until he reached the 107s and began anew.

His first stop was not South Park Elementary but his mother's house. She was not particularly old, perhaps about 50, maybe 55, but no older. The truth was, Kenny didn't know how old she was. Younger than his friends' mothers growing up, for sure. Kyle's parents, for example, were both past retirement age, having fled to Tampa and left Kyle with their old house, a shitty two-storey cookie-cutter in what had at some point been a decent ex-urban sub-development. Kenny did wonder if living in the house you grew up in was perhaps claustrophobic at times, but then, the house Kenny grew up in was a hovel. The only reason his mother still lived there was because his father's life insurance payout was literally buried in the backyard.

"You look sad," was the first thing Kenny's mother said to him.

"Eh." He just shrugged in response. "I've been much worse."

"You get that same look your father would get when he was real disappointed, when something went real bad."

Kenny preferred not to talk about this with his mother. (After she had finished reading his book, she had just put it down on the coffee table, rested her head in her hands, and said, "Thank god your father ain't alive to read this." They never talked about it again.) "Is there anything I can do?" he asked.

"Like what?"

"You know." Kenny shrugged. "Change a lightbulb? Unclog a drain?"

"Kenny." She shook her head. "You don't know how to do any of that. Besides, I take care of myself just fine."

"Well, what did I even come up here for?"

"I don't know. What did you come up here for?"

"To go to the school Christmas pageant," he said.

"Oh, I remember. You were so cute in that, you know. You were a weird little kid, all the time. You never wanted anyone to look at you, you just pulled your hood up and didn't let anyone look at you. But you had nice hair." She reached over to tug at a strand of Kenny's hair, which wasn't much of anything, just a dull yellow mop he tried not to pay attention to. "Kevin just acted goofy, but you were a funny little kid. Kind of in love with me at times, I think. That should of told me you were funny. Trying to kill your father, almost. Never taking off that damned parka."

"I think I was freezing my nuts off," Kenny mumbled. It didn't bother him that his mother remembered things so accurately and yet perceived them in such a skewed way. He pitied her, being such a young mother, but he really pitied himself for having such a young mother. Anyone having babies that young, Kenny felt, was predisposed to selfishness.

He cleared his throat. "I've been seeing someone."

"Down in the city?"

"Kind of."

"It's a boy, I guess."

Kenny rolled his eyes. "Well, a man, yes."

"People change their minds sometimes," his mother said. "Who told you to be militant about it?"

"It's not a choice I made," he reminded her. "I can't just turn it off or on at will."

"I know that. I'm just thinking that you do meet people who don't do just one. I know what bisexual is, Kenny. I wasn't raised in a box."

"Oh." He softened, dropping his hands in his lap. "Sorry, then. Well, yeah, I met a guy, and — it's been around a year, actually."

"Well, where'd you meet him? Why'd you wait so long to tell me?"

"Oh, uh." Kenny sighed, trying to decide how honest to be. He met Craig in preschool, really, but where they'd met was at the 10-year reunion. From a brief conversation there, Kenny remembered that Craig worked downtown, and wasn't surprised to run into him at some bar in Capitol Hill. That was … about a year ago, yes. They wasted little time hooking up in the men's bathroom. Maybe Kenny's mom didn't need to know that part. He said, "I don't know, he's been around. We hit it off, I guess. How does anyone meet anyone?"

"But you could of told me," she insisted.

"Why? So you could pretend it wasn't happening?"

"I just don't understand why you gotta hide yourself all the time."

Was this what Kenny was doing? He'd never really thought about it. Writing a book about fucking one's way through college wasn't really hiding, right? "Well, I don't know," Kenny said. "Maybe I didn't want to jinx it. Maybe a year is the right amount of time to ensure I'm not going to ruin anything."

"People do have a way of sabotaging themselves," his mother said.

XXX

Craig came home at around 6 p.m., exhausted and shivering. It was cold outside, dark and the air was stiff, and it was windy. The actual temperate was not so important when the wind was blowing. In the windows shined strings of green and red lights, and as far as Craig could recall, they hadn't been there when he'd left the previous morning. They were so bright and garish, especially in the pitch-blackness of the unlit South Park streets, that Craig felt blinded. He struggled with his key, wondering if perhaps Bebe had once and for all changed the locks. Then he made it inside, and Cadence was sitting on the steps, crying.

"Hi," Craig said. He kicked off his loafers.

Cadence stopped crying, wiped his eyes, sucked audible snot back into his sinuses.

"Hi," Cadence said, trying not to sound too glad to see his father.

"Those lights are new," Craig said.

"Mom put them up. Last night."

"Okay." Craig left his jacket on a coat rack hung on a wall adjacent the door. "Why are you crying?"

"I'm not," Cadence replied.

"Yes, you were."

"I failed a test," the boy admitted. "A big one."

"Oh." Craig looked at him. Cadence had dark hair down to his chin, had inherited Craig's abysmal teeth — Cadence wore braces, and headgear at night. It did make him look rather monstrous. He went to the orthodontist every two months, and had new rubber bands put in. He liked to alternate the colors, but the pigment usually faded before too long, every band turning a warm shade of gray, too warped to blend in with the brackets and wires. Craig had never wanted orthodonture, and hadn't gotten his teeth fixed.

So here parenting was called for, and Craig wasn't entirely sure what to say. The boy had sat in front of the door waiting, staging an ambush, and Craig obviously wasn't sure what to say. He'd already failed the test. What was Craig supposed to do? "Does your mother know?"

"Yeah. She told me to talk to you."

Typical Bebe. "About what?" Craig asked.

"Are you going to punish me?" Cadence asked. "It was really hard."

"Did you study?"

"Of course." But maybe Cadence hadn't. How the fuck would Craig know? He hadn't even been there.

"Sit right here," Craig said.

Cadence rolled his eyes. "Duh." Then he crumpled up again, burying his head in his hands. This made Craig want to slap him and tell him to get it together. What kind of boy cried over a test?

Craig called out for Bebe, and she answered, "We're in the kitchen." So Craig went there,

finding his wife tying a white-painted cardboard snowflake around their younger son with a red ribbon.

"What is that?" Craig asked.

"I'm a snowflake," Thomas announced. "Like it?"

"Sure. Very nice." Craig felt maybe he should smile. But, he never smiled. So instead he said, "You look very like a snowflake."

"Great!" Thomas gave a lackluster thumbs-up, sounding almost sarcastic.

"I was worried he looked too much like a big white asterisk," Bebe said.

"What's the difference." Craig wasn't curious enough to even make this sound like a question. "Do I have time for a shower?"

"Why? Thomas, get out of here." Bebe shooed him off without rising, slumped in the chair at the head of the kitchen table.

Thomas did shuffle off, holding his precarious costume by its ribbon fasteners, careful not to let the mock-crystalline structure of the poster board catch on the doorway.

"I've been wearing this for two days," Craig explained once his son had left the room.

"Not my problem," Bebe said. "He needs to be there at half-7, which is curtain."

"I can take a shower in 30 minutes."

"We need to talk about your dumbass son."

"Which one?" Craig asked.

"Cadence flunked his biology final."

"Yeah, he told me. Seems upset."

"What did you do?"

"What do you mean, what did I do? I asked him why he was upset and he said he failed a test."

"He flunked his biology final," Bebe repeated. "He needs to pass that to go on to chemistry next semester."

"Don't they ever learn physics?"

"They did that last year!"

"Well, fine, so he can retake biology next semester."

"No, he can't! There are two semesters, fall and spring. They learn two things, bio and chemistry. If he doesn't pass biology he'll be kept out of physics and he won't go on to high school."

"Well, he already failed it, so…" Craig trailed off.

"That's not the right attitude at all," Bebe scolded. "I'm not going to have a kid held back like that."

"Maybe you should figure out why he failed in the first place?"

Bebe narrowed her eyes.

"Sure, blame me. You're never here, Craig, he needs a father, Craig, be a better influence, Craig. Maybe he's just stupid."

"I didn't say any of that."

"No, but you were thinking it. If you want me to punish him, I'll punish him. Yelling is the easiest thing in the world."

"I already yelled. He doesn't take me seriously," Bebe said.

"If he doesn't take you seriously, I don't know what he thinks of me."

"Then I think we have a problem on our hands." Bebe sighed. She tapped her foot on the marble floor of the kitchen. It was a big kitchen, with a modernist glass breakfast table, surfaces everywhere gleaming. The chairs, Brno imitations, had flat, dense seat cushions; Bebe found it uncomfortable and she fidgeted, feeling cloistered by the steel frame. "He's not a dumb boy," she said, resting her hands on the table, next to the scissors and the tape. "He's a lot like you, really."

"Joy."

"What I'm saying is, I think, regardless of whether you're here, you do influence him. Both of them, you know." She tapped her nails, talons in blushing coral, against the glass surface of the table. "I think if I speak to his teacher, I can work something out. I mean, it reflects badly on the school if the kids don't graduate."

"Fine, do that." Craig shrugged. "I really need to change at least."

"Fine."

On the way out of the kitchen, he took one of her strands of linseed hair, ironed to the texture of actual flax, and yanked on it. She knew it as a gesture of reassurance, but her hair was brittle from chemical attentions, and a few strands fell to the floor as he left the room.

XXX

Benji Marsh-Broflovski was a spoiled brat. A charming, charismatic, way-too-clever little brat. He was 4, his birthday was June 9, his favorite food was latkes with pumpkin ice cream (or at least, this had been his favorite food since Kyle had served it to him at Thanksgiving for some reason), and he was in junior kindergarten. You didn't even have to know the kid to figure all of this out. He'd just tell you without asking. Small for his age, shaggy-haired, freckled and brown-eyed, always smiling, still had all his baby teeth — but when he lost his first one, it would be whichever one gave him the cutest gap. Textbook child terror, because he was conscious of exactly how adorable he was.

Kenny thought about Benji, and he thought about Craig's sour, dead-eyed offspring. The little Tuckers were serious kids. Intelligent, maybe, unenthusiastic, certainly, profane and bored at all times. In Kenny's mind, the only difference between the Stevens/Tucker children and their more affable counterparts was the indisputable pressure of their parents' pointless marriage. So you had Kyle and Stan, decent if flawed people who grew up and realized they were madly in joyous, meaningful love.

Then you had Craig and Bebe, who had haphazard, drunken sex when they were 16, only to end up as parents before their senior year of high school. They had something between them, Kenny could see — a kind of closeness forged over 15 years or so. But they'd glommed onto each other out of necessity, bringing up their children as a team effort, letting Mrs. Stevens shoulder most of the burden while they finished high school and Craig went to college. Here they were, just sort of doing it because it was happening. Kenny greatly preferred the Stan-and-Kyle model of conspiratorial parenthood, the idea that having a child was like a mad science project that would produce glorious and delightful results. Craig rarely, if ever, talked about his children. They were just sort of a thing, really, but not any kind of a thing. Just a fact. Kenny suspected that Craig cared about them a great deal. Craig hated frivolity. If he insisted on staying married to and cohabitating with their mother, it had to have been for some reason. It had been almost a year now, and Kenny was still trying to figure this out.

"Kenny!"

Benji launched across the room, the lobby outside of small gymnasium where the kids were lining up for their performances. The show went on in 10 minutes, but having been to his fair share of pageants at South Park Elementary, often as a participant, Kenny had a feeling they'd be going on late.

"Hey!" Kenny lifted the boy off the floor and into the air, spinning him around on the balls of his feet, despite the fact the carpet had too much traction to make such a display graceful.

"You came, you came!" Benji was excited. (Rarely was Kenny blessed with anyone being so happy to see him.) "Abba said someone special was coming and I said, 'Is it Kenny?' but he wouldn't tell!"

"He keeps a good secret," Kenny said, putting Benji back on solid ground. "Show me your costume, huh? He was making it all day, or so I hear."

Benji was delighted to twirl around, arms extended and palms up. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes; several parents milling around did pause to take a gander at this effusive little boy.

The costume was not quite competent, but it had a folksy charm all its own that only amplified the homey feeling Kenny was experiencing. It was nothing less than a sort of icy blue smock with cream-colored felt snowflakes sewn on here and there. Kenny could tell that Kyle's seams were not quite straight yet, and maybe they never would be, but no one in the audience was going to make out crooked sewing on a jittery 4-year-old's costume.

"You look great," Kenny said, nodding his approval. "But what are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be lining up for your song?"

"Oh, but I saw you," Benji said. "I saw you through the door and I wanted to say hi, which was nice, right?"

"Very nice, indeed. But where are your dads?"

"I dunno. Maybe waiting or the audience? Daddy dropped us off so he could park the car."

"Ah, I see. Why don't you go back to your class now?"

"Will you be here after the show?" Benji asked.

"Yeah, of course. Break a leg!"

"Not for serious I won't!"

The auditorium was small enough that Kenny found Stan and Kyle right away, camped out in the center of the fifth row, which promised a good angle for taping the performance.

"Kenny!" Kyle about jumped out of his seat. "I'm the biggest fucking idiot. I just remembered something on the way over here." He grabbed Kenny by the wrist and dragged him to the back corner of the room, slowly filling with parents and other relatives, and disgruntled-looking teachers, more than a few of whom Kenny hoped did not recognize him as the poor kid who wrote the sex book.

"What?" Kenny asked.

"Thomas Tucker — Craig's kid — he's in the same class—"

"I know."

"You know?" Kyle raised his eyebrows. "Of course." He laughed, short and sarcastic. "Why am I not surprised? What am I saying? That is really mental."

"Oh, I don't mean anything by it. I like to see Benji."

"Yeah, who doesn't?"

Kenny rolled his eyes at the way Kyle said this, like he was pretending to make a joke, but he wasn't, because Kyle did in fact assume everyone in the auditorium was either there to see his son, or would be acolytes by the end of the pageant. The sad thing was, this wasn't so far off-base.

But more to the point, Kenny put a reassuring hand on Kyle's shoulder and said, "Look, I went to the Hebrew school Hannukah pageant, too, and none of Craig's children were in that one."

"Don't you think it's better to just … avoid a confrontation?"

"Who's having a confrontation?" Kenny asked. "We are two adults at a Christmas pageant. What do you think I'm going to do, hump him during the 'Hallelujah' chorus? Go up to Bebe and be like, 'Hi, long time no see! I saw your husband yesterday night, though, while I was fucking him in the ass.' I mean, really—"

"It's not him I give a shit about, you fool!" Kyle seemed exasperated. "He is going to be here with his wife! And children!"

"I know that," Kenny said.

"Well, don't you think maybe it's a better idea you not subject yourself to that? Kenny, what kind of masochist are you?"

"Well, if you read my blog post about bondage—"

"I'm not being clever! This is a bad scene, do you hear me? Being the other woman—"

"Because you've never done anything ridiculous like broken up your best friend's commitment ceremony—"

"That was 10 years ago!" Kyle snapped. "We are talking about you, now!"

"I don't want to talk about me. Can we be done with this now? I know what I signed up for." Kenny didn't wait for Kyle to reach some consensus on this point; Kenny swept past him on his way back to the fifth row, nearly stumbling over a stroller and a hunched old woman, someone's possible grandmother. Kyle trailed Kenny, arms crossed, jaw set.

"What was that?" Stan asked, getting out of his seat. He took Kenny by the shoulders and kissed each of Kenny's cheeks. Stan kept his beard trimmed well enough, but the sensation was still odd to Kenny, who much preferred the abrasion of stubble against his skin. (Perhaps Kyle had something with that masochist thing, although Kenny dismissed this as soon as it had occurred.)

"Oh, the dramas," Kenny said, trying to sound dismissive. "So much angst."

"Well, make your bed and lie in it," Kyle said, stepping around Kenny to get back to his seat. "I'm not going to stress for you." Although he totally was.

"Kyle is stressing for two," Stan explained. He was palming a digital camcorder, an efficient boltlike thing attached to Stan's fingers by a taut strap.

"Really?" Kenny asked.

"I wish." Kyle slumped into his chair. "You know I love drama, but I just don't know that I can do a scene right now."

"Well, that's the nice thing about other people's business," Kenny said, taking his own seat. "You don't have to do anything."

It must have been nearing curtain-up (not that the crumbling proscenium of the South Park Elementary auditorium had one, really), and Bebe found them — not Craig, just Bebe, but trailed by Cadence, a dour wraith behind her in baggy black jeans, sagging with laden pockets. Throughout the encounter, the youth stood there, keeping to himself but eyeing all three men with intense suspicion, with narrowed eyes and not even a trace of dislike. To Kenny it seemed knowing and accusatorial, although of course it would seem that way to Kenny. (He doubted Stan and Kyle even noticed.)

But Bebe said, "Hey," opening her arms to envelop them, any of all three of them, familiar faces she must have been relieved to see again after years of being the youngest parent in the audience. Belying this, she added, "I'm so glad you guys are here."

"Oh, we see you all the time," Kyle said, the first one to actually hug her, although he had to angle over Kenny to do it. "It's just a school pageant, right?"

"Well, it's Thomas' first. He's been watching his brother do these for years and it's exciting I guess."

"Benji's too," Kyle said.

Stan got up to kiss her, in his friendly sort of way, on both cheeks. "He's really excited. We're really excited."

"Except he was in a Hebrew School Hannukah show last week so now we're kind of burned out on the whole thing, right?" Kyle looked back to Stan, who registered nothing of this. "Well, I am."

"You never liked Christmas anyway," Stan said.

"I like it fine, it's just not my holiday."

"Don't be jealous you only have that Hannukah thing."

"Well, we do get to play with fire." Kyle punctuated this by stepping on Kenny's toe, certainly with great meaning and purpose, which Kenny watched from his seat with his head down, not even wanting to make eye contact with anyone for the duration of this encounter.

"Hey, Ken," she said touching his shoulder to get his attention. "How are you?"

Kenny looked up at her, saw her lukewarm smile, her big pink lips and her wan blonde hair (which was always natural, Kenny remembered) and the sympathetic curve of her torso where she was carrying a little girl. Kenny wasn't sure when she was due, and he wasn't going to ask. He did say, "Hi, Bebe," in what he hoped was a disapproving and joyless manner, but which sounded to him rather nasty, or at least cold. He hadn't meant it to be like that.

She really liked him in high school. As in, really liked him, as in wanted to crawl into bed with him and fuck. Kenny was still innocent then; he only lost his virginity as a senior in high school, to a blushing freshman girl who still hadn't gotten her period — which was fucked-up, he knew, but she was safe and mild and disinterested. Bebe, on the other hand — Bebe was like sexual opium, formerly exotic but whittled down to commonplace with the passage of time. Even before she fell in with Craig — and Kenny did remember that party, the way Cartman was guffawing at Butters' suit jacket and bad RnB over the speaker system, bowls of broken potato chips in the kitchen — there was no mystery about her. Bebe was never really ruined, exactly, just … trite. But dangerous.

She was a trap Kenny didn't want to fall into, which was made much easier by the fact that, like his two closest friends, he was interested in girls only as a matter of course, not as a matter of attraction. When he said to her at the end of their freshman year, "I'm not attracted to you," he didn't qualify it with anything more specific. But, of course, by now she'd probably read his book, and everything had been elucidated. Or at least everything that no longer mattered.

She wanted to know how he was, apparently. "I'm fine," Kenny said. "We just put out an issue, trying to come up with angles for the next one—" he was spitting this out much too quickly.

"Oh, that's right, you do that magazine." Bebe turned around to say to her son, "Kenny works at a magazine."

"Kenny owns a magazine," Kyle said.

"Kenny and Kyle own a magazine," Stan added.

"Yeah, well." Kyle shrugged, as if to communicate he didn't really.

"So that's what's new." Kenny didn't ask her anything about what was new with her because, well, he wasn't wondering.

"Well, good," she said. "But, I mean, how are you?"

People often asked him this in all variety of hushed tones, like perhaps because he was once a teenage hustler he might be dying of AIDS (no one died of AIDS anymore, as per issue No. 3 of Exquisite Corpse, 'The Death of AIDS') or living in a sewer or just plain dead. People seemed not to understand that all of this was rather impossible, so he tried not to correct anyone. How was he, anyway?

"I'm fine," Kenny said. He had not bothered standing up this whole time. "How are you?"

"Can't complain," Bebe agreed. "Craig's parking the car so we'd better get some seats."

"Parking around here is such a bitch," Kyle said.

"Well, but finding seats is pretty easy." As Stan said this, the auditorium was nearing capacity. Maybe it was sarcastic. Kenny wasn't concerned.

"Let's talk after the show!" She waved before turning to leave. The last thing she said was, "Come on, Cadence," in what sounded like a mean sort of way.

XXX

The performance was about an hour, followed by a reception in the cafeteria. Kenny had sat bored and listless in this cafeteria so many times that entering it now, he felt he was still 8 years old, breaking open the crispy shell of a taco while fourth-grade girls circulated gossip from table to table. Everything was gray, and metal, and the room itself was just a bit cold. He was carrying Benji, though, who was glowing after his star-making snowflake dance, which had somehow gone off script in a way the audience at large found adorable. The first thing that happened when he was Stan entered the cafeteria was a large woman barreling up to them and exclaiming, "Your boy is the cutest thing!"

"He's not mine," Kenny said, prying Benji's fingers from his lips. "That's his father." Kenny angled his head back at Stan, who was taping this exchange.

"Oh, how precious," she said. "He was just delightful. Stole the show. My husband and I couldn't stop talking about how adorable he is."

"Thanks," Stan said, from behind the camera. "We rather like him."

"Oh, who's his mother?" she asked.

"My older sister," Stan said.

"His other father went to bathroom," Kenny said, not before enjoying the look of confusion that had developed on the woman's face.

"Oh, okay," she managed, shuffling off.

Kenny set Benji down on the ground.

"Why didn't you talk to that woman?" Stan asked.

"I don't have anything to say," Benji said.

"You wanna go get some egg nog?"

Without answering, Benji ran off, the flaps of his costume fluttering behind him.

Kenny turned to Stan. "You should stop saying shit like that to people unless you want to get arrested," he said.

Stan laughed. "Anyone stupid enough to think I'm serious deserves to think I'm serious," he said.

"Whatever that means."

Stan was still filming. "Look," he said, pointing behind Kenny.

"What am I looking at?" (Kenny was dreading the moment coming in a few weeks when Stan and Kyle wanted him to come over and watch this video.)

"It's Craig Tucker," Stan said.

"Well, I'm not going to talk to him."

"Why?"

"Why? I mean, why are you filming this? Why anything?"

Stan turned off the camera and replaced the lens cap. "I know I'm not Kyle, and I don't have answers for everything, but it seems to me that if you don't want to make a big problem any worse you had better go say hello to him and act casual about it."

"Why do you both think my being here is some kind of problem?"

Raising his eyebrows, Stan said, "You've obviously never been married."

"She knows he's bi," Kenny said.

"Well, I don't think she knows he's with you."

"What difference does that make?"

Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. "You have obviously never been married."

Kenny began to feel that something was off, although he couldn't put his finger on just what that might be. The drink of choice at the reception was eggnog, and Kenny left to find himself a glass.

XXX

Rather than hang out with Stan and Kyle (who was chatting with fellow PTA denizens, laughing over a plate of cubed cheddar and grapes), Kenny chose to hang back and sip eggnog, observing Benji from afar. The boy was chasing some girls around the cafeteria, laughing like a maniac, his little costume barely hanging off of his shoulders, slipping down his arms.

"What are you doing?" Craig asked, approaching him.

From the periphery, Kenny had been aware that someone vaguely resembling Craig had been narrowing in. But choosing to ignore this, Kenny had kept his gaze fixed on the boy. He made a good distraction, that kid.

"I'm watching Benji run around," he said.

"I mean," Craig clarified, "what are you doing at this Christmas pageant?"

Kenny blinked. "Watching Benji run around," he repeated.

"You are a psychopath."

"I'm his godfather," Kenny said. "I went to the Hannukah pageant, too."

Shaking his head, Craig almost smiled. But, being Craig, of course he didn't. (Although Kenny thought he might have, if Craig was the type to express any kind of pleasure. Even in bed, naked and sweating, Craig kept a straight face. First it was charming. Then it was annoying. Now Kenny just thought of it as a challenge.)

"That kid already has two fathers," Craig said. "He doesn't need another one."

"Don't pretend you're qualified to give parenting advice. Your children are barely people."

"At least they know their place."

"I think they know they don't have a place."

This did make Craig lower his brows, which was about as much as you could get from Craig on a good day. Still, it satisfied Kenny, because he knew the way to do it was to chip away, bit by little bit.

"You say one word to my wife and you will never see me again," Craig said.

"I just wanted you to come to my Christmas party," Kenny said.

"I celebrate Christmas with my wife and children."

"Oh, I'm sure there's tons to fucking celebrate." Kenny's words were harsher than sarcasm, imbued with a sensitive ache that made perfectly clear how he felt about to matter. "That's why you spend your three nights a week with me, yeah? It's fun hanging out with the family? Your threats don't scare me, Craig. You're not the first married man I've fucked. You'll be back. They all come back."

"Sure," Craig said. "Because you're a fucking whore, Kenny."

"I'm not a whore. Not anymore."

"Not literally. Not for money."

Craig walked away. Kenny followed, clutching his empty blue Solo cup for eggnog. He was angry, wanting to pick up a chair or a potted poinsettia and clock Craig in the head with it. It wasn't the things they said that pissed Kenny off so much — just the idea that they could have a fight, arguing about the very principle of their relationship, in a room crowded with hundreds of people, with no one even aware of it, and it did not shake Craig in the least.

Bebe was talking with Stan and Kyle, which was not a surprise (as she had said before the show that she wanted to do so) but Kenny found it rather unwelcome. Perhaps he was not a masochist, as standing with his lover and his lover's wife, idly chatting about the joy and tedium of parenting, made Kenny feel nothing he would liken to pleasure.

"Everyone's been very friendly," Kyle was saying, pushing cheese and grapes around his plate just to look busy. "I want to be very involved, right? I get nervous, because South Park kind of scares me, or maybe the idea of South Park scares me. The idea that everyone knows you, knows things about you — I don't know, we had to think about it a lot before deciding to live here."

"So what made you decide?" Bebe asked.

"We got a free house," Stan said.

"Oh." She had never really had a choice in the matter. Obviously. "Well, it's great to see familiar faces at a school event, really. Until just now it's been strange, really — nobody I'd consider peers. Hey." She pulled Craig toward her, dragging him into this conversation. "What have you been up to?"

"Nothing," Craig said.

Kenny held back, not knowing if he was welcome.

"But, I mean, when we were living in the city—" Kyle glanced over at Kenny beckoning him, trying to draw him into this discussion everyone knew Kenny had no place in — and he shouldn't even be at this Christmas pageant reception, pretending he had anything to do with this place and these people.

But Kenny suddenly felt very lonely, and the idea that someone wanted him in the circle was all he had to grasp onto. So he wedged his way over, between Bebe and Kyle, still feeling like the smartest thing he could do would be to turn and run out of the building, flee to his car, sit behind the steering wheel wondering how things went to wrong, why he didn't just pick up the next morning and drive until his car fell apart, starting a new life in a new shitty town, probably somewhere in Iowa. It struck Kenny as ironic that he was envisioning this as a viable escape plan; Stan and Kyle had one night, several irresponsible years ago, gotten into a sputtering red coupe and driven until they reached Des Moines. As soon as they turned around and hit Nebraska, their union was null, but it was a romantic idea. Kenny only wished he had someone who wanted to be in a car with him for 12 hours. He hated people in love. And he hated cars.

"—because we felt there was no sense of cohesion here." Kyle was still talking. "People say Denver is so artistic or that Colorado has this natural kind of indigenous folk culture and I think, really? Because it doesn't seem that way. Anyway, it was mostly Kenny's idea."

"What was my idea?"

"Exquisite Corpse. I don't know, I want an issue on gay parenting, obviously, but every time I have a thought I blog about it. I can't stop blogging. It's addictive. And people flame me, and I can take away their IP posting access. It's pretty sick, I have to say."

Craig and Bebe were just staring at Kyle now.

"You mean that's a real thing?" Craig asked.

"What's a real thing?" Kyle replied.

"That magazine. It's a real thing?"

"Well, what did you think it was?" Kyle raised his eyebrows. He did this when he wanted to express the full judgment of his intellect. And it was a substantial intellect, but Kyle clearly failed to ascertain exactly how little Craig gave a shit what he thought.

But Bebe said, "I'd be interested to read an issue," which Kyle found heartening, while it made Kenny shudder.

"What's wrong?" Stan asked.

"Too many children," Kenny muttered. "Sensory overload."

"Let's go find Benji," Stan suggested.

"Sure." Kenny had no reason not to agree to this.

So they wandered off, Stan carrying his camcorder in both hands, cradling its vital casing and precious innards, full of the memories Kenny was certain would end up being played over a cheesy montage at Benji's bar mitzvah. The boy himself was sitting in a circle with three girls, showing them the inside of his snowflake costume. (It wasn't even lined with anything, but even Kenny could admit that for a first try, Kyle had proven himself a capable seamstress.)

"Abba made it," Benji said to the girls.

"That's baby talk," a blonde one said.

"I don't have to deal with you. My dad's here." Benji pushed himself off the floor, and leapt ahead of Stan and Kenny.

"Who were you talking to?" Stan asked.

"Oh, some girls from the class," Benji said.

"You like them?"

"They're pretty stupid," which didn't really answer the question.

Kenny and Stan just looked at each other, each figuring that, yes, most people were pretty stupid, 4-year-old girls included.

Back on the other side of the room, Kyle was still talking, and Bebe and Craig were still staring at him in disbelief. (Kenny thought Craig might be giving him a look, is this guy really still talking, but then Kenny remembered that he and Craig had no mutual sympathies, and Craig didn't even consider Kenny's magazine a real thing.)

Kyle interrupted himself to reach his arms out for Benji and coo, "There you are!" in a tone that only applied to this situation. "This is Benji," Kyle said, shoving him to the middle of their little cluster.

"I know," said Craig.

"We've met before," said Bebe. "On the first day of school."

"Where are your kids?" Kyle asked; it was just another way of bringing the conversation back to his kid.

Bebe looked like over the course of this conversation, she had gone from relief and excitement to have people she considered peers at school functions, to wanting to stab herself in the eye with a fork. "They're around," she said. "Someplace."

Craig just shrugged.

"Can I get some cookies?" Benji asked.

"If you want," Stan said.

"But how many?"

"How many do you think you should eat?" Kyle asked.

"Like, 30."

"That seems like a lot of cookies," Bebe said, attempting to make eye contact with Benji. To no avail — Benji had turned around and was tugging at the hem of Kyle's sweater.

"We think he needs to make his own decisions about that kind of thing," Kyle explained. "If he eats 30 cookies he'll obviously get sick, and then he'll learn what the right amount of cookies to eat is."

Stan tried to elaborate. "He probably won't eat more than, say, 10 cookies on his own volition. That's probably enough."

"I want 30," Benji repeated. "Actually, 75."

"That still seems like way too many cookies for a kid to eat," Bebe insisted.

"Well, that's how he'll learn." Kyle was pointing into the palm of his hand, as if to intensify how serious he was about demented parenting. "We think if he figures out the consequences of his actions, he'll naturally learn not to repeat them."

Craig gaped at this. "Why don't you just tell him not to do dumb things in the first place?"

Stan started to say, "We think he'll figure—"

"But, I mean, what if he's doing something life-threatening?" Bebe asked.

"Well, I supervise him," Kyle said. "Obviously if he's going to, like, stick a fork in a light socket…"

"Obviously what? You'll let him do it?"

"No!"

"That doesn't make any sense," Craig said.

"Well." Stan rolled his eyes. "Maybe not to you."

"What does that mean?" Bebe asked.

Kenny grabbed Benji by the hand, and led him away from the group. "Come on," he said, bending over to whisper to the boy's ear. "Let's get some cookies."

"Okay," Benji agreed. "I don't really want 30, though. Maybe more like 10."

"I understand." Kenny nodded. "Too much of a good thing doesn't always feel so great."

XXX

Stan and Kyle didn't even ask Kenny where he was sleeping. He'd rather sleep in his car than stay with his mother, which left Stan and Kyle's couch, or he really would have to lie down in the backseat of his car. That, or drive home, but after the pointless frustration that had been the Christmas pageant, crawling into bed after midnight and falling asleep by himself really didn't sound so appealing to Kenny. His apartment was pretty empty, even with another person in it.

While Benji was getting ready for bed — he ran through the living room in matching pajamas, primary-colored dinosaurs marching through the wilderness of his thighs and behind — Kyle made two cups of tea. Then he said, "Fuck it," and pulled a corked bottle of half-drunk Riesling from the very back of the refrigerator.

"Maybe this makes me an alcoholic, but all those other parents just make me want to drink," he said, splashing wine into two plastic Sesame Street tumblers. (When Kenny lifted one to his lips to drink, he noticed it was not Sesame Street proper but Israeli Sesame Street, complete with the jarring addition of a rodent-type thing. "My mother sent those. They're funny, right?" Kenny found it more startling than funny.)

Benji came down, having brushed his teeth, and gave Kenny a goodnight kiss on the cheek. "Are you sleeping over?" he asked.

"I think so."

"So you'll be here for breakfast?"

"I don't know why I wouldn't."

"Okay, that's good."

When Kyle said goodnight, he swept Benji into his arms and lifted the boy off the ground, swinging his legs a few inches above the tiled kitchen floor. "Sweet dreams," Kyle whispered into Benji's hair. "Did you have fun on stage tonight?"

"Yeah," he said. "When's the next pageant?"

"Probably next year." Kyle kissed Benji on the lips and both cheeks, and on the top of his head. "You were so good, Benji. I'm so proud of you."

"I know."

Stan came down after having put Benji to bed, and Kyle offered him a glass of wine, presumably also out of a Sesame Street cup. "I think I'd better go to sleep," he said, kissing Kyle's wrist, and then the palm of his hand, and then his fingers. "Do you guys think you'll be talking for a while, or—"

Kyle sighed, finishing the end of his first cup of Riesling. "Don't wait up for me," he said. The look of regret on Kyle's face told Kenny that whatever they were intending to do — perhaps read to each other or, more likely, have quiet, intense sex — Kenny's presence had put a stopper in their plans. "I'm glad you got everything on tape," Kyle said. (Although it wasn't on tape; it was digital.)

"Me too," Stan agreed. "Good night, Kenny."

"So let's talk." Kyle got up to pour himself a second glass of wine. He sniffed it before drinking, which was some kind of suspicious compulsion that Kenny couldn't even begin to comprehend. "What did you talk to Craig about? Was he annoyed you were there? I know it's not crazy but seriously, I could see him being pretty bothered that you came, assuming I were in his position."

"He's never really bothered by anything," Kenny said. "He's such a blank slate."

"Does that bother you?"

"Of course! You want to know what we talked about? He basically said, 'If you tell Bebe it's you, we're done,' which is well enough, because I don't want to tell her — I want him to do it."

"Oh, Kenny." Kyle put a hand on top of one of Kenny's. "You know he's not going to."

"Well, I don't know — I don't know why he would be with me so much if he didn't love me, like you said—"

"I know. But he's not going to leave his wife. He's just not. Regardless of how he feels. You're already giving him everything he wants. He's not going to change his whole life for you."

"That's so fucked up, though."

"Well, it is, but — I'm sorry. I don't know. He's got kids. I know Craig is like a misanthropic cipher, but really, having children is something I can speak to. The last thing I'm sure he wants is to tell his children he's leaving their mother for a man. It would ruin all of their lives."

Kenny thought about the things he knew about Craig — that he hated complexity, just wanted things to be very straightforward and plain. "But the way he's living now is so complicated," he said, trying to reason it out.

"Well, how much more complicated would it get if he broke up his family? I don't know how much longer you want to do want to do this for. Craig Tucker is a pointless fuck-up. I'm sorry, it's true. He kind of has this enigmatic dick thing, so I get why you like him, but — I'm sorry, I just don't understand. You can do so much better. This is a ridiculous thing for me to say, of all people, but — don't you think you're better than dating some guy you went to grade school with?"

Kenny so badly wanted the answer to be 'yes.' "You're right," he said. "That's highly ridiculous of you to say."

"Well, I have something to tell you." Kyle cleared his throat. "We're trying to get pregnant."

"Um. How?" Kenny blinked. That sounded stupid. "I mean, with what womb?"

Kyle sighed. His smile shifted from businesslike to apprehensive. "Well, that's the question, isn't it? I mean, that's really the crux of the issue, right?"

"You used Shelly last time, right?"

"We did, but — it's complicated. I don't need to bore you with this, if you don't want to hear it, I just figure you maybe don't want to talk about Craig anymore—"

"It's your life, dude," Kenny said. "Tell me."

Sinking back in his chair, Kyle crossed his arms. "Okay," he agreed. "We always wanted Stan to be our biological link. I never really thought I should reproduce. I mean, I obviously did, and I'm glad I did, but you can look at him and look at me and see there should really be more of him around. You know?"

Kenny shrugged. "Stan's okay," he said, which sounded wrong. "I mean, he's one of my best friends," Kenny corrected. "I don't know if he needs to like, re-engender the earth or anything."

"Well, regardless. Stan should be the biological father. That eliminates Shelly. We did speak very briefly about going with me again, but Shelly won't do it again."

"That's kind of bitchy of her."

"Eh. Not really. Asking a girl to submit herself to IVF and then have a baby is asking a lot. Getting it done once is nothing short of miraculous. I'd be lying if I said Shelly isn't a bitch, but there had to be a kind of love there for her to do something so generous."

"I don't know. I've never thought about how — really, I mean, it's a lot to think about. Have you considered adoption?"

"Absolutely not."

"Because there are plenty of children—"

"No." Kyle sounded very firm on this point. "We want a little girl. And I want it to be Stan's. He could have a beautiful little girl, don't you think?"

"Not sure you can really decide on something like that," Kenny said. As for Stan, well — Kenny was getting a mental picture of 9-year-old Stan wearing a dress and a fright wig. With long false eyelashes. Very Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. In an odd way. Also, Stan had a beard, and struck Kenny as more androgynous than girlish, but what Stan and Kyle did when Kenny wasn't around was a mystery he didn't want exposed. So he said, "Sure, that sounds nice."

"We really want this. I think about Benji, and I think — what if there were more of him? I don't know that I ever really wanted a lot of children, but — maybe I should blog about this."

"Sure, blog about it. Brilliant."

"Brilliant." Kyle tented his fingers, bit his lip, tried to act calm. Took another sip of wine and swished it around his mouth. Swallowed.

"What?"

Kyle sighed. "I have to tell you something. I have to get a job."

"You have a job," Kenny said.

"I know. I mean, a real job."

Real job. Kenny shuddered. He didn't like thinking the magazine wasn't a real job. "Why?"

"Because surrogacy is expensive."

"Can't you just, I don't know…" Kenny felt his heart beating faster, his mind beginning to spin into some kind of panic. "Give yourself a raise, or something?"

"Kenny." Again, Kyle sighed. "I'm not paid."

"I don't understand—"

"When I set up the financial structure of Exquisite Corpse — I mean, every year, when we sit down and look at the books — we pay you a salary out of our advertizing budget. But I haven't taken anything, not once. Because Stan has a job, and I figured … I don't know what I figured. But I know this — I have to find a job that pays me and has benefits. I need insurance. I can't stay in a more involved capacity anymore."

"So, you're leaving? Kyle, you can't leave me. You can't just — don't leave me like this!"

"I'm not leaving. I'll write. I'll blog. But I need a salary. We need to find 50 grand if we want to go forward with this as an option. Which we do. I mean, I know you know how expensive college is. I know you put yourself through college. That's something I never had to do. When I wanted to start a family, my parents gave me their old house. But having a kid makes me realize I need to — I don't know, I can't sit around pretending I'm some kind of urban dandy. I have a family I need to support. Kenny, say something. I know this sucks, it's not what I wanted—"

Kenny stood, brought his wine cup to the sink, and dumped it out.

"I would have drunk that," Kyle joked.

Kenny turned to face him. "I wanted to start a magazine to show people that there are alternative lifestyles that work for people, and that it's possible to live a life of, I don't know, art and beauty at all times. But I guess this is the end of our little experiment."

"It doesn't have to be the end. You can run the thing by yourself. You can learn how. You can do everything that I do. You can talk to advertisers, too. Probably better than I can. No one ever accused me of being charismatic, but you put yourself through college on your charm alone. Who does that?"

"I put myself through college by letting strange old men fuck me," Kenny said. "So let's not glamorize it."

"I know," said Kyle. "I read the book. Why do you think you're paid, and I'm not?"

"You took this on with me because you didn't want me to have to whore myself for cash?"

"No, I took this project on because we had similar interests and it was fun. I figured out a way for it to pay you so you didn't have to whore yourself."

"That's subtle."

"I'm not trying to be subtle. I'm trying to tell you it'll be okay."

For a moment, Kenny felt maybe it could be okay — and then he remembered that Kyle and the magazine were the worst of his problems, that he had to wake up in the morning and drive back to the city, convince advertisers that his business was important, and pretend he had never met Craig. It seemed daunting, and he felt tired just thinking about it.

"Can I crash on the couch?" he asked, even though it was barely 11 p.m.

"Sure. I'll get you a blanket." Kyle downed the rest of his wine, and left the cup in the sink. "It's going to be fine," he said.

Somehow Kenny knew it would be, and yet how was rather unclear to him.

XXX

Kenny found himself awake. For a moment in the fog of sleep he was certain it must be daylight, but even from the couch he could tell it was still nighttime. He meant to check his phone, or try to find a clock, but a little hand was shaking him, and a little voice said, "Wake up, Kenny." It was Benji.

"Hey," Kenny said, suddenly desiring to act quite awake and not at all annoyed. "I'm up." He maneuvered himself into a sitting position. It was cold in the house, cold and dark, and he could just make out the shape of this boy in the dark. "What can I do for you?" he asked.

"Um. I had a bad dream," Benji said, quickly, like he just hated to say it.

"Oh no." Kenny extended a hand, not sure what he was putting it out there for. "That's terrible."

Benji took it. "I know!" he said, aghast at the indignity. "Right?"

Kenny smiled at the way this little boy spoke like Kyle, with the same inflections and emphatic, inquisitive jabs. It was adorable. He hoped the kid didn't talk like this forever. "What about?" he asked.

"Oh, bad stuff. The monster came."

"What monster?"

"Oh, the mean one."

"What did he look like?"

Benji let go of Kenny's hand, and pursed his lips. He was trying to look terrified, but he just looked stupid. Luckily for him, Kenny thought a little kid looking stupid actually looked adorable. Finally, Benji said, "Oh, fuck, he was scary," which was an amplifier rather than a descriptor in this case, really. Kenny wasn't stupid — he got the idea.

"That's awful," he said, effecting a tone of sympathy. "What are we going to do?"

The boy's eyes lit up, but he was trying not to look too excited, with the way he was trying to keep his hands at his sides, and a smile off his face. "Could you maybe come sleep with me in my bed? You know, because of the monster, right?"

"I don't think there are actually monsters."

"I know that. Just come to my room, please. Okay?"

"Sure." Kenny had no reason to decline the invitation.

The walls of Benji's room were painted in bright, genderless secondary colors — blocks of glossy royal purple, forest green, burnt orange. His bed was shaped like a sailboat, which seemed excessive. It wasn't like the kid was into sailing or anything. He lived in fucking Colorado, after all. Just emblematic of the kind of life he had — childhood as fantasy. To Kenny, this seemed sweet. A small lamp was on, but Benji switched it off as they climbed into bed. Kenny laid on his back, arms behind his head, while Benji pulled the quilt up over them both. Bare feet hung over the side of the frame — the prow, maybe? — and Kenny wished he'd left his socks on.

"Oh, good," Benji said, curling up, away from Kenny. "Now let's all go to sleep."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Oh, okay. But only one. I mean, it's late, right?" It was only midnight, but to a child to must seem like the world was dead.

"Only one," Kenny agreed. "How come you didn't wake up your daddies, if you had a bad dream?"

"That's a good question," Benji said. "I think I'll answer it. Well, okay. So I know they're tired and I don't want to wake them. I do usually but you're here, and that's special. I never get to have anything special."

"I think you're very special." Kenny shut his eyes, realizing he was actually tired — he hoped he didn't fall asleep before Benji did.

"I know. Of course I'm special. Dad and Abba tell me all the time. I mean, but I never get to have anything special. I wish you slept over more. You could move in with us!"

Kenny worried that Benji sounded too excited to fall asleep. "If I lived with you, me being here wouldn't be special," he explained.

"I'll tell you something. But you have to keep it a secret." (Benji didn't wait for Kenny to agree to keep it secret.) "Sometimes I go to their room when I wake up at night, and I think about if they're having sex, because they're talking to each other."

"Do you know what sex is?"

"Oh, I know what sex is," Benji bragged.

Kenny wondered. "Really? I don't. You should tell me."

"You don't know? I know. Daddy told me. It's when two people fall in love and they want to be close to each other and they sleep in the same bed. But not like we are, they hold each other and let their skin touch. I've never done it, but this is what Dad said. He said sometimes he and Abba do it, and that if it's a girl and a boy it can make babies. How come you didn't know that?"

"I don't know." Kenny opened his eyes. Suddenly, he was quite awake again. "I guess I don't have anyone to fall in love with."

"Abba said you did, that you like boys like he and Daddy do."

"That's true."

"Maybe we can have sex one day. If we've both never done it, you know."

"Well, sex isn't for children." Kenny rolled over to see a look of disappointment on Benji's face. "But one day you'll grow up, and you'll meet someone, you know, a girl or a boy, and try it with them. But I have to stick with people my own age. I was in love with a man, actually, but now I'm not so sure."

"Who?"

Kenny couldn't believe he was going to talk out his relationship problems with a 4-year-old. "Just a man. Not a great man, just a man I liked a bit. What time is it, Benj?"

Benji looked at the clock. "Oh, it's 12:14 a.m., which means morning, but it's so early that it's still nighttime."

"Well, let's try to sleep," Kenny suggested. "We can talk tomorrow."

"I have school," Benji reminded him.

"Well, maybe we'll have breakfast together."

"Do you go to work?"

"I work at a magazine," Kenny answered. "Sometimes."

"Daddy works at the animal hospital, but Abba doesn't work anywhere, because his job is to take care of me."

"He's doing a good job. But I think he'd be annoyed if he thought you weren't asleep."

"He's probably having sex with Daddy," Benji insisted.

"Well, I'm going to sleep." Kenny made a demonstrative point of yawning, stretching, and rolling over. "Good night, Benji. Sleep tight."

"Good night, Kenny."

XXX

Kenny awoke, and it was still dark out. For a moment he grasped around the unfamiliar hull-curve of a bed frame, turned, and realized he was sleeping with a little boy. It was warm in this room, and as Kenny's eyes blinked open they adjusted, revealing the quiet shapes of a child's life — a toy box and a coat rack and a dresser piled high with precarious turrets of blocks. Yes, he was sleeping with Benji — and his phone was vibrating the staccato warning of an incoming message. Groggy but curious, Kenny flipped his phone open. It was not even 6 a.m. — but Craig was texting: I'm outside.

Rolling off the bed, Kenny stumbled to the window. He pushed back the curtains, and gasped at the snow — everywhere, covering everything, blanketing the roofs and the cars in the driveways and the coniferous front-yard trees. And down below the window stood Craig, arms crossed but looking upward, in a way Kenny wanted to call "hopeful." He knocked at the window, but Craig didn't notice him; he didn't want to wake the boy, so he just texted, be right there. His boots and jacket were still at the front door; he hoped no one would notice he was slipping out.

"What are you doing here?" Kenny asked first thing, feeling this was a good and justified question. "Holy shit, man. It's early."

"It's not that early," Craig replied, making no gesture of easing his arms. Snow was still falling, and Kenny admired the way it caught against Craig's black hair, stark against the strands for a split second before melting. "I get up this early every day."

"Not when you sleep with me, you don't," Kenny said.

"Well, in my real life, I do." Oh, real life. That hurt.

"I was sleeping. What's up?" Kenny couldn't be mad at Craig. "How'd you know I'd be here?"

Craig rolled his eyes. "I mean, come on," was his only response.

"What if I drove back?"

"Well, you didn't." Finally, Craig dropped his arms, but kept a defensive stance, leaning back on one leg. "You're right here. I do know you."

"How well do you know me?" Kenny asked.

"I know you well enough to be here, don't I? I'm going to work. And I figured, maybe you might like a ride."

"I drove here." Kenny nodded toward his car, laden with snow in the driveway.

"Oh."

"Isn't it early for work?"

"I didn't know if you would want to talk to me," Craig said.

"Out here?" Kenny asked. "In the snow?"

"You want to talk in there?" Craig pointed to the front door.

"No. Let's talk in your car."

Craig apparently found this an agreeable medium, because without so much as saying anything, he turned and trudged back to his car, mostly clean (it must have been in the garage all night) and parked right behind Kenny's — in effect, parking Kenny in. It was no warmer in the car than it was outside, but Kenny didn't mind.

With the engine turned on, the windshield began to fog, and Craig leaned over the armrest to kiss Kenny on the mouth. But Kenny turned his head away.

"What's the point of this?" he asked.

"The point of what?"

"Of this," Kenny repeated.

"Of making out in my car? I figured we could—"

"You said you wanted to talk."

"Sure, I mean — yeah."

Kenny sighed, and slumped against the window. Already it was damp from the heat of the running engine coming into contact with cold glass. "What's the point of doing this together? You said you could find someone else. I could find someone else, too."

"I like you, though. And I know you like me."

"You said you loved me," Kenny said.

"I do."

"But you don't act like someone who does. You act like I'm this awful secret."

"Because." Craig's eyes narrowed, and for the first time during this conversation in the car, he turned from Kenny. "You are a secret, don't you understand? Loving you doesn't matter. You'll always be a secret."

"But what if I don't want that?"

Craig tensed his mouth just a bit, and it occurred to Kenny that it had never passed through Craig's mind that maybe, just maybe, Kenny wanted their relationship to change at some point.

"So we've hit a milestone," Kenny said. "A year together, kind of. Where is this going? Are you going to come to my party, and let me introduce you to people? This whole time I've been thinking that, little by little, I'd just … work myself into your life. I'd work you into mine. Slowly. I don't want to shock you. Just, you know, we need to take some kind of step. It's not like I want to move to the suburbs. But how long am I going to have to spend half the week alone at night, thinking about you with some other person?"

"You say that like I'm doing you some kind of wrong, through. I don't think you understand, Kenny. I'm married."

"I know!"

"Well, it sounds like you're telling me to get, I don't know, not-married or something—"

"I'm not asking you to do that!"

"You're telling me to take these little steps to being more with you. You want me to go to your stupid Christmas party? Okay, fine, what if I went?"

"I'd be really happy," Kenny said.

"But then what? Would you also want me to be there for Christmas? New Year's? Valentine's Day? I'm not going to leave Bebe. Period. I always told you I wouldn't."

"But you don't even like her!"

"I like her fine."

"Then why are you here with me? Why are we sitting in this car right now?"

Craig took a deep breath. He seemed … unsettled. That was good. But then he composed himself and said, "If you want this relationship to continue — and yes, I like you, I do want it to continue — then we have to draw a line. You don't have to pretend this is a normal relationship. You should sleep with whoever you want."

"I've slept with more people than you'll ever realize." Kenny put his head in his hands, trying to pretend this wasn't happening. "I want a family, Craig. I want to feel like I have a partner."

"You can have that with anyone you want," Craig said. "You're smart and interesting, you get things done — a lot of guys would really like to be with you."

"But I'm with you!"

Kenny wrenched his hands from his face and looked at Craig, in the dimness of the humid interior of Craig's car. Kenny felt his ass was going numb in a bucket seat, while he felt himself slipping lower into the slick leather.

"Kenny." Craig took a lock of Kenny's hair; it was slightly greasy but thick, and it felt like something he could yank — although he didn't. "I have two — three kids. I have a wife. We get along okay. She knows I'm with someone, and that's okay. Bebe and I have an understanding — three nights a week, I can fuck whoever I want. But on that fourth night, I have to go home. It's not a very pleasant life. But it works for us."

"Tell me you want to break up with me," Kenny said.

"But I don't. Why would I?" Craig dropped his hand and put it on the steering wheel. "This works great for me."

It had never occurred to Kenny, with all the hollowness and unfairness he had seen in the world, that anyone who claimed to love him, or really just anyone in general, could be so impossible and willful and cruel.

"I'll come to your party," Craig said. "I could bring Cadence. But I couldn't tell him why we were there. I think Bebe would like that. If I did more stuff with Cadence, I mean. But we couldn't stay over. Do you think that's fair?"

Kenny thought it was anything but. Yet he nodded and said, "I guess that's a compromise."

Craig leaned over the seat, and this time Kenny let himself be kissed, just once, on the mouth.

"Have a safe drive to work," Kenny said, unlocking the car door.

"You too." Craig wasn't looking at Kenny when he said it — he was staring straight ahead.

XXX

It was morning in South Park, and Kenny realized he was locked out of the house when he tried to get back inside and the knob wouldn't twist. He was wearing all of his clothing and his car keys were in his pocket, but Kenny wasn't ready to go yet.

He had to climb over the fence to get into the backyard, the expanse of it blanketed in snow, littered with the tell-tale lumps of what seemed to be a swing set and a sandbox, and many wrought-iron chairs — patio furniture, for when summertime came and Stan and Kyle had late afternoon barbecues, chatting idly while their son ran around the yard. By the back door, Kenny found a shovel, and he began to push snow from the foundation of the house, clearing a pathway from the patio doors to the front yard. Then he shoveled the walkway and the stoop. He had gotten through most of the driveway when Stan found him.

"Hey," he called, leaning against the doorframe. It had been some time since Kenny had seen Stan in the morning, and here he was — track pants, bare feet, and an open hooded sweatshirt revealing the faint traces of hair that made Stan look virile and safe, even at who-knew-what-anymore in the morning. "You don't have to do that, you know."

Kenny pushed a final shovelful of snow to the yard, and went back up to the front door. "Well," he said, balling his gloveless hands into his pockets, "I thought I should. I mean, I slept over."

"It's not a big deal, though," Stan insisted. "Kyle can do that shit. He might be disappointed you didn't leave him any. He'll think it's a comment on his self-sufficiency or something."

"Well, it's not." Kenny shrugged. "I just got locked out."

"You could've rung the doorbell." Stan zipped his sweatshirt up. "Shit, you know, it's cold out here."

"Well, December in Colorado, what are you gonna do?"

"I'm gonna eat breakfast. You want some? Kyle's making eggs."

"I like eggs." Kenny nodded, and Stan nodded back, affirmation that seemed useless in light of the fact they were really only talking about snow and eggs.

Kyle was in the kitchen, whisking eggs. In front of Benji, who was eating a piece of pumpernickel bread and coloring with two fat crayons (both shades of blue) was a plate of chopped up ingredients — green peppers, radish, and some kind of ham, it looked like. Weird, but whatever. Kenny didn't turn down free omelets.

"Do you like yolks, or just whites?" Kyle asked, not even looking up.

"Me?" Kenny asked.

"Yeah, you. Yolks or whites?"

"Both, I should hope. Which of you doesn't eat egg yolks?" Kenny felt neither Stan nor Kyle was fussy enough to eat egg white-only omelets.

"I don't like yolks," Benji announced.

"Why not?" Kenny asked him, sitting down at the table.

"Oh, they're yucky," he explained. "It's like eating a chicken baby."

"Isn't eating the rest of the egg like eating a chicken baby?"

"Well, no, right? Because it's just the other stuff, the stuff the chicken baby is in to protect him or her. And anyway, I don't know about yellow. It's not my favorite color."

"What's your favorite color?" Kenny asked.

"Blue," Benji said, rolling his eyes. "But you can't eat blue."

"What about blueberries?" Stan asked. He was pouring a cup of coffee.

"But they're not really blue like a crayon," Benji said.

"Maybe blue comes in all kinds of shades," Kyle called out from the stove. "Kenny, can you bring me that plate of stuff?"

"Sure." Kenny was certain Kyle meant the radish-pepper-ham mixture.

"I have to warn you, I can't really make a very good omelet," Kyle said, grabbing a handful of ingredients and depositing it in the midst of an egg-nest. "Flipping them is kind of outside of my abilities."

"You'll learn," Kenny assured him.

"The last time Abba made omelets for breakfast it was so funny because he said 'godammit' and threw it in the trash." Benji laughed along to his own memory, covering his mouth at the scandalous hilarity. "And Daddy said, 'Don't waste food,' and you said—"

"Kyle said, 'You can't call that thing food, it's a psycho omelet,' " Stan concluded. "That wasn't that funny, Benji. He burned his hand. There was like, dead skin in it."

"Maybe you shouldn't use your hands to scoop the ingredients in," Kenny suggested.

"Oh, but I'm learning." Forcing the fold of the omelet from the heat of the pan, Kyle wrinkled his nose. "See?" Kyle patted the side of the omelet with his spatula. "Omelets for everyone. No big deal."

In light of the conversation he'd had with Kyle the night before, and the one he'd had with Craig just that morning, Kenny felt that there was something deeply meaningful and forced about Kyle's intonation. But Kenny had been burned before, and he would be burned again, and he knew he would recover. For the moment, it was 7 in the morning and he was very hungry. Kenny just wanted a curious omelet.

---

I'm not sure I'm too happy with these results.