The kids were crashed on the couch in their PJs, bathed in cartoon illumination. Thomas peeled Frankie from the cushions and handed him to Sam. Though she looked wonderful holding him, Thomas realized that his kids were just as much a liability as Sam's job. Not once in the course of their conversations had Sam mentioned anything about motherhood, let alone surrogate motherhood. Parenting wasn't among her talking points, and whenever Thomas mentioned it, she always steered the discussion elsewhere.

It just wasn't going to work.

But then, after carrying the kids over and putting them down, after sharing several wide-eyed this-is-too-conjugal looks, Sam asked him for a cup of coffee.

'It's still a long drive down to New York,' she explained.

At once cursing and congratulating himself, Thomas left her rubbing her feet on the living room couch. He filled the kettle and was surprised by the sound of the TV when he turned off the tap: the homogenized drone of an anchorman's voice discussing the Nasdaq. The voice disappeared, and he heard Sam laugh as he rooted through his cupboard for the instant decaf.

'What's so funny?' he called out, suddenly feeling as though he were back with Nora. Suddenly feeling good.

'Movie on a porn channel,' floated back to him, 'called Weapons of Ass Destruction 14.'

Thomas laughed. He found the coffee. 'Starring Agent Gerard?'

'That would be Ass with Destructive Weapons,' Sam said with mock seriousness. 'What's your code?'

He shouted the numbers to her one by one as he prepared her cup. His heart racing, he thought about Mackenzie and his final, enigmatic look. He was a perceptive old asshole, Thomas had to give him that.

She was curled up on the couch when he came out with the coffees, flicking between different channels, most of them full penetration—and various combinations thereof.

'All they have is gonzo,' she complained.

'Ah, an old-fashioned gal,' Thomas said, feeling himself stiffen. Anything goes, he supposed, after a day like today.

'Did you know that gonzo was actually how porn started off in the 1920s? Money shots and all. They called them "loops".'

Sam laughed in a kind of anxious, this-isn't-happening-way, curled her feet beside her. 'When I was fourteen my boyfriend and I would skip out and watch my dad's pornos. Pretty tame compared to all this… cock-slave stuff. I mean look at it.'

Thomas smiled, his heart racing. The scene flashed to a graphic close-up.

'No internet?' he asked. He shuddered to think of all the dirty cookies his computer had accumulated when he was fourteen.

'Too poor,' she said, crinkling her nose at the screen. She brought her feet to the floor, leaned forward with a skeptical frown. 'Now that looks about as sexy as stuffing a turkey.'

'Yeah, but it shows the spoons. Very sexy.'

'The spoons?'