The message was clear enough. He was needed in Riverdale, they said. To call, even to ask what was wrong, could be read as extenuation, a sort of plea bargaining. It had been their arrangement—his, the twins’ and triplets’—to serve, forever to come through, simply to be there when the chips were down, the mutual designated hitters of each other’s lives, the gut priorities of love. Yet did he love them? Had they loved him? How well? Was it not rather into a life-long category of mascot that they had enlisted him? (This thought out while still on the flight to LaGuardia, so, as far as he could determine, no damage done, those instincts still alive in him, for all the haywiring of his nerves, to set aside the at hand, the this, then this, then that sequences of his life, by which he meant, of course, his plans.) Yet emergency had its advantages, too. It took, like so many weeks in the sun, years off. There was, it was impossible to mistake it, a kind of bittersweet glamour in the big-time, big-stuff catastrophes of interruptions and drastically changed plans.
