As I sat down I accidentally knocked a fork off the table. “So, how was your day, honey?” I said, after the noise of the clattering fork had died down in my mind. “Kids okay? Sitter come on time?”

She just looked at me and pushed the long black hair off her right cheekbone. She touched her thumb and middle finger to the iced-coffee glass. “You’re a little weird, aren’t you,” she said, in a tone that had a couple of spoonfuls of regret in it.

I shook my head. “A little nervous, that’s all. I’m not exactly Joe Date.”

“Joe Date?”

I felt like I had fallen on my knees in a puddle of mud, and now, to make up for it, I was falling on my chest, with a white shirt on. “How are you?” I asked.

“Fine. Are you insinuating you don’t go on many dates? Married or something?”

“Never married.”

She took a sip of her coffee. “Why? You’re what, about twenty-eight? Nice-looking.”

“Thirty,” I said. I had a glass of water up to my face for protection. I saw Jason or Dominick or Adam-who-will-be-your-serverperson, off at another table, and with all my heart I was willing him to come over and let-me-tell-you-about-tonight’s-specials. Janet had me pinned down with the black eyes. She coughed and tried to hold it in. She wanted an answer.

I moved my left foot and felt the fork down there. “I have seven kids out of wedlock,” I said. “That’s why. I’m up to my forehead in credit-card debt. I’m hyperactive. Women’s bodies make me uncomfortable. You’re nice-looking and not married either, right? It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bad person.”