Good? The lousy cheapskates but after a few hours I told them I had the flu, and left. I hope that won’t be the last time I get pregnant,” and he said “Why should it be? Look how easily you conceived this time? We went out for how long, a couple of months?” and she said “More than three, but it’s not as if we did it just once,” and he said “Anyway, you’re fertile. You took precautions and you still got pregnant, which either means, and I doubt you’d do this — you’re too much of a perfectionist—” and she said “Me? Not me. Miss Unperfectnik. But regarding what?” and he said “Your IUD device. About putting it in right,” and she said “The ‘D’ is for ‘device,’ and the device is always in, didn’t you know?” and he said “Sort of. But my point is that you had to have put it in right originally, being what I think you are—” and she said “The doctor does that, and then takes it out if you need a new one or it expels on its own or it’s irritating you,” and he said “But it didn’t expel, did it?” and she said “No, it’s still in there and feels fine,” and he said “But anyway, that you’re so fertile that you got pregnant despite the device. So at least you now know you can conceive, and against one of the most uncompromising obstacles, which has to be of some relief to you, unless it’s happened before,” and she said “It hasn’t, this was a first, and the good you see in it with that relief thing is too premeditatedly positive a notion for me — think right and ye shall be all right, and that sort of baloney — and I’d think for you too. Because you, do you feel any relief in knowing you can help conceive? Nah, you’ve probably got a chorus line of knocked-up women behind you,” and he said “Not that I know of,” and she said “So I’m your first, huh? Well, that’s something; you’ll always remember me. But some women I’ve heard of, and in their twenties, have had just one conception disruption like mine and were never able to conceive again. Doctors couldn’t explain it. It’s as though all their repro organs went down the toilet too, or wherever their predelivery took place — doctors’ offices’ waste containers, in trash bags out the window or in the incinerator. It would be horrible to imagine that this little guy of mine I flushed down was it, the very last of my unilluminated lonely line, since, I think I told you, I’m siblingless and so are my parents on both sides,” and he said “I’m sure it wasn’t,” and she asked why and he said “Just, I’m sure, because you’ll be at your procreative peak for years — why wouldn’t you be? you’re just that age. Meanwhile, if you’re not feeling well, anything I can do for you?” and she said “You won’t like this, I’m positive, but could you come see me? You can even sleep with me if you wish, not to make me pregnant. I’m not about to do one of those predictable bits: immediately after losing it, try to make up for it by getting another. No, it’s simply that I’m feeling extra sad today over losing it—” and he said “You wouldn’t have kept it, would you?” and she said “Probably yes; I’m hypocritically opposed to abortion, in addition to my fears that this was my last huzza. I also don’t have any present company to speak of — not even to speak to — so you’d be welcome,” and he said “You know that wouldn’t be any good,” and she said “You have another steady already?” and he said “If you must know, I haven’t had sex or, to be vulgar, even a handjob with anyone since you, and not because I haven’t wanted to. Just haven’t met anyone or anyone where it went that far.” She said “I could always come to your room if you still haven’t a car and it’d just be one last shot. I’m not exciting you with this chatter? It’s not doing a thing to you? — be honest,” and he said “No; I’ve got an erection, but what’s that? I don’t want to say I also get them when cats jump in my lap or I’m holding a particularly heavy book there for a few minutes. I’m sorry for what happened to you, I wish I could have done better by you, I don’t know what the hell didn’t happen with me in relation to you, but it didn’t and that’s all I can say,” and she said “Okay, I like that honesty, and I thought you’d want to know about baby Gil — they have gills, you know; and about our getting together a final time, I felt I ought to at least give it a whirl. I wish you felt the same for me as I do for you,” and he said “I wish that was so too,” and she said “But you don’t,” and he said “I suppose not,” and she yours?” He still hadn’t had sex since he was last with her, but he’d reject the offer, tactfully, saying “No, thank you, I’m all tied up with work these days, but that’s very kind of you.” And if she pleaded? How would she plead? “Please, cut the bull, I just want to get fucked, it has nothing to do with you except you’re the only guy I know around here that way — wear a mask, even, what do I care? — all I want is your goddamn penis in me and then you can buzz off and never come by or call again, and I won’t contact you again either.” Or nicer, politer, but he’d reject it no matter what, and she’d never plead and he doubts she’d ask. But here’s something: what if she had come up to him last November right around the time of the abortion and said “I want to have your baby I’m pregnant with, will you go along with me?” He would have asked, what does she specifically mean will he go along with her, and she would have explained, and he would have said “No, because the truth is I don’t want to live with anyone I might have to support or take care of in any way and I also don’t want to be responsible for a child — I don’t have the money or time.” Suppose she’d then have said “All right, then I want to have the baby but not with you; you don’t have to see me again or the baby ever, not even in the hospital after it’s born. But will you at least give me your moral support — your financial support I promise never to ask you for and will even sign an affidavit regarding that — and say you don’t mind my having it? I just want the child to know its father wasn’t against its birth, even if he wasn’t strongly for it either, and then just leave it to the future for you two to work that little issue out.” He would have said “Okay, sure, have it, I don’t see any problem — I’ll in fact come see you and it sometime, and maybe even in the hospital, if I’m still in the area and you wouldn’t mind. And if I ever make any money beyond what keeps me bordering on poverty, and again if you don’t mind, I’ll contribute to its upkeep.” Because he was beginning to want children, two of them, though not necessarily by the same woman. In fact, probably by two women, since he feels the courts would go after him for child support quicker if he had two by the same woman in one state. But he just wanted to say, or this was mostly it, “Yes, I’m a father,” and doesn’t think he’d be embarrassed at saying “And no, I was never a husband,” for he was already twenty-eight and the way he was going he didn’t think he’d have enough income in the next ten years to have kids any other way and he didn’t want to wait till he was forty or so to have his first one, if he’d be able to afford to have it even then. She sent him two tickets in May to the graduate theater department play she did the lighting for and had a small role in—“In case you want to bring a friend, gal or guy, but I’d love for you to see what I’ve done stagewise and am pretty proud of — not my acting: that’s always been bad.”—but he didn’t go. About a year later he got a letter from her mailed to his graduate department and forwarded to him. She’d left school, never got her masters, was back in Mass., had given up theater altogether and was now working as a housekeeper and applying to the American Studies programs of several grad schools, none in Cal., and rest assured: not because, as she’s heard, he’s still there. “After you didn’t attend the play I lit and acted passably in I tried out on myself lots of times what I’d say if we bumped into each other: ‘You’re not interested in what I do, then you’re not interested in me, and no doubt vice v. for both of us (after all, it was a big mirror I was doing this to, though it actually doesn’t hold true from me to you, but anyway), so nice knowing ya, Bucko, and take a flying leap!’ so then why’m I writing? Not to knock you. Probably to say that if I had bumped into you I never would have said those things: no guts, flair or bravado and I simply ain’t the censorious type. I also thought you might want to know why you never bump into me anymore or see me thermosing in the main caf, perhaps to give you additional liberty if you’ve been trying to steer clear of me the past year. As for Cal., I’ve had my fill of that empty self-absorbed state and don’t know how anyone can go through four nominal seasons without wearing an overcoat and galoshes or their equivalents and still call himself a healthy-headed human being.” She hoped he was well, and despite everything she’s said here she still thinks of him fondly, “Believe me. The only person I bear a grudge against is myself.” He wrote back saying he’d left grad school too but wasn’t planning to apply to any other kind of program no matter how enticing another fat stipend seemed — he just wasn’t a student, something he knew since first-year grade school, so he’d continue to work at what he was persistently pursuing so unsuccessfully and see if he got lucky enough and also a miracle occurred, where it eventually came out half okay. As for housekeeping, he was doing lots of it these days, as he was living with an extremely indolent, indefatigably sybaritic woman—“picture the most famous odalisque picture you can picture and you’ll picture her, except she has pigtails and bangs — and her rambunctious, untidy son from her first husband. Did that sound as if I’m her current one? I’m not, nor does she plan to remarry or rekid by anyone, so who knows how long, considering my ballooning penchant for pahood and dandling and so on, I’ll be living with her and grooming her sumptuous home. You’ll also be surprised, since I don’t think you ever thought of me as hardworking and resourceful, that for dough I have three jobs, as this woman and boy are essentially living off me and the monthly pittance her ex sends for the kid every other month: artist model around ten clockwatching hours a week, substitute teacher in several high schools till the state board boots me out when it learns I haven’t the ed credits I said I did, and my main labor: thirty working hours a week at a Woolworth’s in the area but not the one you slaved at, and mostly doing stock, and I didn’t mention that place to bring back bad memories for you. I’m tremendously sorry for what you had to go through alone a year ago and how terribly I behaved and I hope you’ve forgiven me or will sometime soon.” She didn’t answer his letter and he never wrote her address down, thinking she’d write back and he’d get it then, and a few years later he tried recalling her last name when he met someone her age from the same town she grew up in, but couldn’t. He tried describing her, it didn’t work, so he said “Maybe this will help you remember her. She had a large open hole in her left foot, I think, or maybe it was the right, from an accident in childhood, she said — a car or truck ran over it. It was about the size of a quarter and was on the top part of her foot — what do you call it? the instep — a hole so wide and deep I swear you could almost see flesh and bone in it, so something you would have noticed if she wore sandals with thin straps or was barefoot,” but this woman, who looked as if she was getting sick because of his description, kept shaking her head no.