Twisted

one of my flights. How old are you, Pete?”
    “I’m ten,” he answered. “But I’m going to be eleven next week.”
    She squeezed his shoulder. Then looked at Mo. “I’m so sorry about what happened,” she said in a soft voice. “The trooper who put Pete on the plane told me your boyfriend was killed in a hunting accident.”
    “No,” Mo said, struggling to say the words, “he wasn’t my boyfriend.”
    Though Pete was thinking: Of course he was your boyfriend. Except you didn’t want the court to find that out because then Dad wouldn’t have to pay you alimony anymore. Which is why she and Doug had been working so hard to convince Pete that Doug was “just a friend.”
    Can’t I have friends? Aren’t I allowed?
    No, you’re not, Pete thought. You’re not going to get away with dumping your son the way you dumped Dad.
    “Can we go home, Mo?” he asked, looking as sad as he could. “I feel real funny about what happened.”
    “Sure, honey.”
    “Mo?” the flight attendant asked.
    Mo, staring out the window, said, “My name’s Jill. But when he was five Pete tried to write mother on my birthday card. He just wrote M-O and didn’t know how to spell the rest. It became my nickname.”
    “What a sweet story,” the woman said and looked like she was going to cry. “Pete, you come back and fly with us real soon.”
    “Okay.”
    “Hey, what’re you going to do for your birthday?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. Then he looked up at his mother. “I was thinking about maybe going hiking. In Colorado. Just the two of us.”

A LL THE W ORLD’S A S TAGE

    T he couple were returning from the theater to the Thames ferry, through a deserted, unsavory area of South London, at four hours past candle-lighting.
    Charles and Margaret Cooper ought, by rights, to have been home now with their small children and Margaret’s mother, a plague widow, who lived with them in a small abode in Charing Cross. But they had dallied at the Globe to visit with Will Shakespeare, whom Charles Cooper counted among his friends. Shakespeare’s family and Charles’s had long ago owned adjoining acreage on the Avon River and their fathers would on occasion hunt together with falcons and enjoy pints at one of the Stratford taverns. The playwright was busy this time of year—unlike many London theaters, which closed when the Court was summering out of the city, the Globe gave performances year round—but he had been able to join the Coopers for a time to sip Jerez sherry and claret and to talk about recent plays.
    The husband and wife now made their way quickly through the dark streets—the suburbs south of the river had few dependable candle-lighters—and they concentrated carefully on where they put their feet.
    The summer air was cool and Margaret wore a heavy linen gown, loose in the back and with a tight bodice. Being married, she cut her dress high enough to cover her breasts but she eschewed the felt or beaver cap customary among older wives and wore only silk ribbons and a few glass jewels in her hair. Charles wore simple breeches, blouse and leather vest.
    “’Twas a delightful night,” Margaret said, holding tighter to his arm as they negotiated a crook in the narrow road. “I thank thee, my husband.”
    The couple greatly enjoyed attending plays but Charles’s wine-importing company had only recently begun to show profit and the Coopers had had little money to spend on their own amusements. Until this year, indeed, they had only been able to afford the penny admission to be understanders—those crowded in the central gallery of the theater. But of late Charles’s industry was showing some rewards and tonight he had surprised his wife with threepence seats in the gallery, where they had sat upon cushions and shared nuts and an early-season pear.
    A shout from behind startled them and Charles turned to see, perhaps fifteen yards away, a man in a black velvet hat and baggy, tattered doublet, dodging a rider. It seemed that the man had been so intent on crossing the street quickly that he had not noticed the horse. Perhaps it was Charles’s imagination, or atrick of the light, but it appeared to him that the pedestrian looked up, noted Charles’s gaze and turned with haste into an alleyway.
    Not wishing to alarm his wife, though, Charles made no mention of the fellow and continued his conversation. “Perhaps next year we shall attend Black Friars.”
    Margaret laughed. Even some peers shunned