"What if I measure it for you? I could measure it for you and call you back with the numbers." The three brothers stared at him with identical glassy, alien stares. "That's okay. I can come in," and he knew that she meant, *I won't ever come in again.* "What if I bring it by anyway? I could bring it by tomorrow night and you could see it and make up your mind. No obligation." "That's very kind of you, but I'm afraid that I'll be out tomorrow evening --" "Friday? I could come by Friday --" He was trying to remember how to flirt now, but he couldn't. "I could come by and we could have a glass of wine or something," and he knew he'd said the exact wrong thing. "It's all right," she said coldly. "I'll come by later in the week to have another look. "I have to go now, my husband is home," and he was pretty sure she wasn't married, but he said good bye and hung up the phone. He looked at his solemn brothers now and they looked at him. "When are you going home?" he said, and Edward looked satisfied and Fred looked a little disappointed and George looked like he wanted to throw himself in front of a subway, and his bottom lip began to tremble. "It was Ed's game," he said. "The Davey game, it was his." He pointed a finger. "You know, I'm not like them. I can be on my own. I'm what *they* need, they're not what *I* need." The other two stared at their fat bellies in the direction of their fat feet. Andrew had never heard George say this, had never even suspected that this thought lurked in his heart, but now that it was out on the table, it seemed like a pretty obvious fact to have taken note of. All things being equal, things weren't equal. He was cold and numb. "That's a really terrible thing to say, George," is what he said. "That's easy for you to say," is what George said. "You are here, you are in the *world*. It's easy for you to say that we should be happy with things the way they are." George turned on his heel and put his head down and bulled out the door, slamming it behind him so that the mail slot rattled and the glass shook and a stack of nice melamine cafeteria trays fell off a shelf and clattered to the ground. He didn't come back that night. He didn't come back the next day. Ed and Fred held their grumbling tummies and chewed at the insides of their plump cheeks and sat on the unsold Danish Modern sofa in the shop and freaked out the few customers that drifted in and then drifted out. "This is worse than last time," Ed said, licking his lips and staring at the donut that Albert refused to feel guilty about eating in front of them. "Last time?" he said, not missing Felix's quick warning glare at Ed, even though Ed appeared to. "He went away for a whole day, just disappeared into town. When he came back, he said that he'd needed some away time. That he'd had an amazing day on his own. That he wanted to come and see you and that he'd do it whether we wanted to come or not."