“What kind of thing is that to say to me? It wouldn’t have occurred to me not to stay if she hadn’t said that. Now I’ll probably leave. I don’t even want to. I like Carlotta. We have something very nice. If I’d thought of having a kid right now, I’d have wanted it with her. But saying she’ll understand and it’ll be all right if I run out is like those stupid true-false questions you get on quizzes. Or like, when you’re a little kid and you break a pencil in two and then stick it back together and go waving it at people saying, ‘Is this pencil broken?’ You know very well nobody’s going to ask you a stupid question like that unless the pencil is broken. But if you just hand a guy a pencil he doesn’t look immediately to see if it’s broken before he starts to write with it. Of course, there are people who’ve had broken pencils slipped to them so often that they’ve become very suspicious. You offer them a pencil and they give you a dirty look. You know right away that they’ve been through a lot in life!”

Sam grinned. “Or maybe it’s really a multiple-choice question. Anthracite is: (a) hard coal; (b) soft coal; (c) the study of human culture. There always seem to be more choices than there actually are.”

“Did you tell Carlotta all this? How you feel?”

“No. I just said I’d have to think. I don’t really know how I feel. I’d like to be happy about it. She’s happy. Maybe I am happy.” He looked at me like I could tell him whether he was or not. His hands clutched each other in a big tangled fist. “A little boy of my own.” He paused. “I don’t know if I’m ready to set myself up as somebody’s superego. Of course, there’s a lot I could teach him.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

The room was beginning to stink of us, thicken with our talk. I lifted the skylight and put the water on to boil.

Sam tilted the chair back against the wall. “I have decided one thing. I’m going to change my name. Whether I stay or go, there’s going to be somebody in the world who thinks of me as his father. A father should have a good name. A fresh one with no bills and tickets following it. I don’t feel like Omar anymore anyway. I feel like Omar Plus! Besides, I never did get a last name. Now it’s going to be Aram Rommel.”

He watched as I poured water over instant coffee. I handed him his cup.