Page 63 of Full Contact

“Tell Felix I said good luck.”

“He doesn’t need luck. He has a strategy,” Mark said.

***

Russ called early Sunday afternoon. Josh had built a marble run, and he wanted me to see all of it at once.

“Watch, Uncle Clare. Watch the part with the funnel.”

The phone swung toward the ceiling, then the carpet, and then a blur of cardboard tubes taped to the side of a bookcase. A marble disappeared from the screen, and Josh cheered.

“I didn’t see it,” I said.

“It went in the funnel!”

“I believe you even though I didn’t see it.”

Peaches was on my lap, where she’d settled after lunch, and she didn’t approve of the cheering. She flattened one ear and kept the other pointed at the phone in case the noise turned into something important.

“Josh,” I said. “You’re moving the camera and the marble’s moving. You can’t film a moving thing with another moving thing. Somebody has to hold still.”

“Which one?”

“You.”

“But then I can’t drop the marble.”

“Get your dad to hold the phone,” I suggested.

There was a short argument off-screen, and then the picture steadied. Russ had the phone. I saw the edge of his thumb.

“Okay,” Josh said. “Watch.”

The marble dropped through a paper-towel tube, rolled down a ramp made from a cereal box, circled the funnel twice, and fell into a plastic cup.

“Good job,” I said. “The funnel’s the best part.”

Russ turned the phone around. “While I’ve got you,” he said. “Kelsey wants to talk about Christmas Eve. Her mother’s coming Christmas Day, which changes the bedrooms, and there’s a question about the airport. Can we do a call Thursday night? After the kids are in bed?”