We sat reading our comics for a while and then Kevin spoke.

“Cousin Arnold.”

“Yes,” I said.

“How would you like to take me fishing?”

“Fishing? You mean in a boat?”

“No, off the rock jetty.”

“Oh, well, you don’t need me for that.”

“You don’t want to go fishing with me?”

“No, not really.”

Oddly enough he didn’t pursue the matter. If he had I would have explained that I didn’t fancy sitting on a rock all day in the hot sun. But he let it go. And then came up with this a couple of minutes later:

“What about going to see the ducks?”

“The ducks?”

“At that lake on Cape May Point. We could go look at the ducks.”

“You want to go look at some ducks.”

“Yeah,” he said.

And I was the one who was supposed to be mentally ill.

“Maybe,” I said.

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s go today.”

“I have to go to the library,” I said.

“I’ll go with you.”

“All right,” I said.

I finished the comic, then went up, had my shower, and changed.

Kevin was on the porch when I came down. He had a stack of library books on his lap, and I had four or five of my own under my arm.

The library is in the basement of the city hall, a short walk away.

We turned in our books at the desk, and Kevin immediately headed for the children’s section. Normally I would have headed straight for the mysteries myself, but I asked the librarian where the biology books were. She told me, I found the biology section, the whole single shelf of it, and I set to work.

Nothing. Nothing I could use. Then I had a brainwave: the encyclopedia. Fortunately the library had a full Britannica, only a few years old. I went right to the first volume and “anatomy”. The human body charts with the overlapping clear plastic pages were there, but they told me nothing new. I already knew where the vagina was (but at least I was finally able to see the difference between the vagina and the uterus). I checked the “C”s but there was no mention of this thing the clitoris. Same thing with the “V”s. Not even a word about the vagina, let alone a six-page article.

And this was supposed to be the world’s greatest encyclopedia? A search for an entry under cunnilingus also proved futile.

I was on my own.

As I headed for the mysteries I consoled myself with the thought that thousands of generations of men had been at least as ignorant as I on this subject. Perhaps the thing to do was just to ask Elektra. Presumably she knew where this alleged little man in the boat was, if he indeed existed and Steve had not been pulling my leg.

Kevin came over, his arms full of books.

“What were you looking up in the encyclopedia, Cousin Arnold?”

“Um, something about boats.”

“Are we going to go out in a boat?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t swim.”

“I could wear a life vest.”

“I’ll take you to see the ducks,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yes,” I said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

I had found a book called This Sweet Sickness which looked good. It seemed to be about a young man who was not quite right in the head.

I actually like to read about crazy people now.

I like to read about how not to act.

That afternoon I made good on my word to Kevin. We got two old bicycles out of the garage and headed out.

We biked in the hot salty sunlight down Sunset Boulevard. On that long empty stretch with the lush woods on the right and the ocean off to the left I had to slow down and stop occasionally until Kevin caught up. We turned down Light House Avenue and there was the lake, Lily Lake I think it’s called, even though it’s really just a sort of overgrown pond.

I sat in the shade of an oak tree while Kevin crept down to stare at the ducks. He stopped at the water’s edge and crouched down. Some ducks slowly glided back and forth along the water’s surface. They looked bored, but then it was a hot day.

Insects buzzed, and sometimes one of the ducks emitted a half-hearted squawk. Yellow lily pads lay still on the water by the banks. I was as damp as a lily pad myself from the bike ride. No one else was around.

I had stuck The Waste Land in my back pocket. I opened it and resumed where I had left off the previous night, i.e., the first line.

The next five or six lines got better, but then came this line: “Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee” which a footnote informed me was a lake south of Munich, a town I had actually been in, and in the summer, in 1945.

Here again Eliot was losing me. Why should summer surprise anyone? What would be surprising would be if summer did not come.

I closed the book over my finger. There was Kevin, squatting staring at the bored ducks. Then he took a wadded handkerchief out of his pocket, opened it up and began to toss bread crumbs onto the water. Sure enough two or three of the ducks skimmed over and began poking their bills down at the floating crumbs.

The ducks were no longer bored.

The quacking word got out to all the ducks on the lake, a dozen or so of them.

Kevin slowly doled out his crumbs, one by one. He seemed to be trying to be fair, making sure all the ducks got an equal share of crumbs.

Finally the crumbs were all gone, and Kevin told the ducks this. After a few minutes they seemed to understand, and they swam away about their business, already looking bored again.

Kevin stood up and walked back to where I sat.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m finished. We can go now.”

The funny thing was that now I felt like watching the ducks. But I could see that Kevin had had his fill.

“Okay, I said.”

And we got on our bikes and headed back home.

Who says my life is not exciting?