Frog by Stephen Dixon Read Free Book Online Page B

living room. Is in the kitchen, he is too. His arms are out. His father looks at him and bursts out laughing. He continues to look at him and laugh very hard.

4
    _______
Frog Dances
    He’s passing a building in his neighborhood, looks into an apartment window on the second floor and sees a man around his age with a baby in his arms moving around the living room as if dancing to very beautiful music—a slow tragic movement from a Mahler symphony, for instance. The man seems so enraptured that Howard walks on, afraid if the man sees him looking at him his mood will be broken. He might feel self-conscious, embarrassed, leave the room or go over to the window with the baby to lower the shade or maybe even to stare back at Howard. Howard knows it can’t always be like this between the man and his baby. That at times the man must slap the wall or curse out loud or something because the baby’s screaming is keeping him from sleep or some work he has to do or wants to get done—but still. The man looked as happy as any man doing anything with anyone or alone. He wants to see it again. He goes back, looks around to see that nobody’s watching him, and looks into the window. The man’s dancing, eyes closed now, cheeks against the baby’s head, arms wrapped around the baby. He kisses the baby’s eyes and head as he sort of slides across the room. Howard thinks I must have a child. I’ve got to get married. At my age—even if I have the baby in a year—some people will still think I’m its grandfather. But I want to go through what this man’s experiencing, dance with my baby like that. Kiss its head, smell its hair and skin—everything. And when the baby’s asleep, dance with my wife or just hold her and kiss her something like that too. Someone to get up close to in bed every night for just about the rest of my life and to talk about the baby, and when it and perhaps its brother or sister are older, when they were babies, and every other thing. So: settled. He’ll start on it tomorrow or the day after. He looks up at the window. Man’s gone. “T’ank you, sir, t’ank you,” and walks to the laudromat he was going to, to pick up his dried wash.
    Next day he calls the three friends he thinks he can call about this. “Listen, maybe I’ve made a request something like this before, but this time I not only want to meet a woman and fall in love but I want to get married to her and have a child or two. So, do you know—and if you don’t, please keep your ears and eyes open—someone you think very suitable for me and of course me for her too? I mean it. I had an experience last night—seeing a man holding what seemed like a one- to three-month-old baby very close and dancing around with it as if he were in dreamland—and I felt I’ve been missing out, and in a few years will have completely missed out, on something very important, necessary—you name it—in my life.”
    A friend calls back a few days later with the name of a woman she knows at work who’s also looking to find a mate, fall in love and marry. “She’s not about to jump into anything, you know. She’s too sensible for that and already did it once with disastrous results, but fortunately no children. Her situation is similar to yours. She’s thirty-four and she doesn’t want to wait much longer to start a family, which she wants very much. She’s extremely bright, attractive, has a good job, makes a lot of money but is willing to give it up or just go freelance for a few years while she has her children. Besides that, she’s a wonderful dear person. I think you two can hit it off. I told her about you and she’d like to meet you for coffee. Here’s her office and home numbers.”
    He calls her and she says “Howard who? ” “Howard Tetch. Freddy Gunn was supposed to have told you about me.”