“Good girl,” he says. “Now, if you hear Mom coming down the stairs, I don’t even want you to say goodbye. I want you to end the chat and erase the history. Do you understand? You never spoke to Dad.”

The Professor is playing backgammon with Liam on the ottoman. He recites lines by nineteenth century French poets while waiting for the kid to lose. I try to focus on their conversation instead of the moist smacks and swallows of Jørgen at the boob or Reginald masticating his lamb. Reginald always chooses a spot close to me, probably because the presence of the journal gives him the impression he doesn’t need to break his silence. Since he cannot help but mangle his morphemes, the use of language is occasioned by only the utmost necessity. For this reason, he seems to delight in mealtimes, his tongue and teeth and gullet at least a utility for digestion. I try to picture his lips on a woman. I bet he brings extra enthusiasm to that experience as well. “What a bizarre delta of desire the mouth is,” I write down in my journal, rip out, and pass to him. He smiles. The Professor rings out his words clear and true:

“Ah! les oaristys! Les premières maîtresses!”

“What are you studying in school, doll?” Carl asks. “Last time we talked you told me that your class was almost done reading J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.”

“Did you write that?” Liam asks.

“It’s by Verlaine,” the Professor says, “the contumacious lover of Rimbaud. He ended their relationship by smacking him with a wet fish.”

“Is that a metaphor for something?”

“Sont-elles assez loin toutes ces allégresses.”

“Why don’t you read a bit to your dad from the end?” Carl says. “I’ll read along with you.”

“I’m not done yet,” the Professor says.

“Sorry,” Liam says.

“Si que me voilà seul à présent, morne et seul.”

“As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret.”

“Morne et désespéré, plus glacé qu’un aïeul.”

“Who was Rimbaud?”

“Another utterly bonkers poet.”

“Every spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly.”

“O la femme à l’amour câlin et réchauffant.”

“What was his deal?”

“He took shits under the beds of friends and poisoned them with sulfuric acid. Not that Verlaine was much better, as he beat his wife. After Verlaine shot him, Rimbaud wrote Une Saison en Enfer.”

“When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”

“I thought Verlaine slapped him with a fish.”

“He did that, too. They were in love. They traveled through Europe together,” the Professor says. “You know, Liam, my dearest friend looked just like you. Unfortunately, he committed suicide.”