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in the windshield. But at least Bob had integrity: he was mad at the world, if not yet at me. If I didn’t wind sprint to my car or work on weekends, I was in for long visits. Still, something about him touched me.
    Bob and I had really started to settle in—with Bob tracking my movements to make sure that I was home from work for at least ten minutes before he showed up—when Monika called me from Belgrade. She had written occasionally since leaving, but this was the first time I had spoken to her in a couple of years. I found it painful in the extreme and didn’t quite keep track of the conversation, uncertain why I should care that she had money from the sale of her house or that little Karel already slept through the night and was such a happy boy. Monika must have detected my confusion because she suddenly asked, “Are you following this?” and I had to admit that I was a bit lost. She filled me in: she wanted to come back. What had happened to her new man? I asked her. “Out the window!” she said.
    Monika spoke nearly perfect English, but she always managed to alter our colloquialisms slightly. My favorite was her description of a problem as “a real kink in the ointment.” I tried to correct this to “fly in the ointment,” but with a blank look on her beautiful face she asked me what a fly would be doing in ointment. I let it go. I had been raised to think that loving your spouse was a requirement. “Love is a job,” my mother hadsnarled at our wedding as she gazed at Monika, who was wearing some sort of shocking Eastern European headdress. Thus, I loved Monika even after she left me and until the day she announced her return, a baby under her arm by someone I had never met.
    On the first day of the Bozeman Sweet Pea Festival, Monika got off the plane and handed me little Karel. “For you. Have I aged? I don’t seem to turn heads the way I used to.” She wore some sort of gown that fit her like a giant lampshade, a grand cone that went from her neck to the ground. “Is that a dirndl?” I asked.
    “No, it’s a dashiki. Oh, God, you haven’t changed.”
    I was in shock. As for little Karel, now in my arms, he was clearly black. I had an unworthy thought: Wait until Bob gets a load of this. Turned out I was wrong to worry about it because when Bob met Karel he thought he had a skin condition of some kind and expressed his sympathy.
    In the parking lot, Monika said, “What are you doing with this tiny car?”
    “I’ve been single, Monika. It was all I needed.”
    “Well, I’m back.” She worked her way into the passenger seat while I held little Karel, who was gazing into my eyes confidently. “And this put-put will prove inadequate.”
    The feeling came back to me, from the days of our marriage, that I was doomed in life to take a lot of shit and make weak jokes in response.
    We made love as soon as we got to the house. Monika bounced me around and remarked that I seemed out of it. Across her lower back was a mysterious architectural tattoo, which turnedout to be Le Corbusier’s plan for the High Court of Chandigarh, India. As I drifted off into postcoital tristesse, Monika raided the icebox. She was perfectly candid about her enthusiasm for food, explaining that her ex was a glutton. “Often when people come from lands of scarce resources their response to abundance is gluttony.”
    “A big fellow, is he?” I asked weakly.
    “In every way,” she said with a laugh. “You know what a Mandingo is?”
    “Is it something to eat?”
    “No, idiot! A Mandingo is an African warrior. You’re thinking of a mango!”
    “Oh. Is he an African warrior?”
    “Hardly. He’s a Nigerian neurosurgeon. But Olatunde has the sort of Mandingo traits that I hope Karel inherits. He’s actually Yoruba.”
    I looked over at Karel. He didn’t seem to possess any Mandingo traits. He was just a little baby waving his arms around. When Monika collapsed with jet lag, I took him out to the sofa and let him