just listen?” and he nodded, and she said “It is fun and has been most times — well, not fun now, and it’s been more than fun, of course — and I like you a lot, I think you’re a very dear person,” and he said “Watch it, Jack, here comes the kiss off,” and she said “It isn’t; now listen. And I once thought I was in love with you, before we—” and he said “Either you were in or you weren’t and if you felt you were — thought it — you were,” and she stared at him and he said “Vow: silence,” put a finger over his lips and she said “love with you before we started living together . I’m sure it’s what made us live together or encouraged us to,” and he said “Excuse me, I know I shouldn’t be talking, but I want to remind you that you said last week you loved me. It was at dinner, the Egyptian Tavern, over that mixed Middle Eastern appetizer platter if you want to get exact about it — I can even tell you what we wore, your hair was up not down, the main dishes we had,” and she said “And what we drank, because we were a little tipsy at the time, bock beer at home—” and he said “Shared, one twelveounce bottle shared,” and she said “Wine you brought to the restaurant. I think we drank a whole bottle, before even the main dishes came, and French too, which I always feel is more potent than the others,” and he said “A cheap French wine, probably from Algeria, so not so potent; I even told you that at the table, making the Middle Eastern connection. And almost the whole bottle, though maybe half before the main dishes came, but we ate a lot over a long period because the service was slow. And we were feeling fine, just fine, couldn’t be better, we held hands, kissed over the table — lips and hands, you even kissed mine,” holding his hands out, “and a week or two before that in bed after making love we said it too — I love you, you love me — I don’t know who said it first; you did, or I, but the point is we both felt it at the same time — it was obvious to me, obvious,” and she said “Where’s this conversation getting us, Gould? — oh, I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to use your name,” and he said “I’m trying to replicate the circumstances of the events, disputing you amicably in proving that we said we loved each other then so were in love, for after you told me it at the table and in bed, I told you it too, or the reverse,” and she said “All right, then, I felt and said it then, and we were then, but only after we were half smashed or had made love as you said and I was no doubt feeling good in bed, spirits high and body excited and satisfied and mind relieved of whatever shit this city and practically everyone in it gives. But I shouldn’t have said it when I was in that particular state, not even to tit for tat your I-love-you if yours was first, since it’s the equivalent of saying it when you’re drunk,” and he said “And that could’ve been the night you conceived,” and she said “It’s possible, if it was a few weeks back; but we’re together two to three times a week and usually on those days, unless I’m hemorrhaging or down with a bad cold or flu, we make love. But it’s unimportant now how the baby happened. Whether conceived in love or friendship or doggy passion or out of coercion on your part or generosity on mine when you couldn’t go to sleep without it or because you were so nice that day I couldn’t deny it or that some of your come dribbled off my stomach into me after your interrupted ejaculus, if it was a night when I was too tired to put my diaphragm in or couldn’t find it and had asked you to withdraw, not to say that if I did use my diaphragm then it was the first time in about a thousand for that one that it didn’t work. But it’s still a conception we have to deal with and I’m dealing with it this way by getting rid of it. So whatever was said or done between us, I’m saying to you, ours is not the kind of love that sticks around and goes trippingly on and on and which I want to happen to me to get married again. And even if I were in love with you or anyone, and deeply, which I’m definitely not with you, the first point I made is the truest and most immutable and that’s that I’m not at all ready to have a child now or get married. I have to be on my own more. I’ve said it and I’ll say it again,” and he said “You don’t have to,” and she said “No, I want to, because it’s not getting through: I have to be on my own more — I must. All this comes too soon after my marriage ended, which I got too dumbly into to begin with, so do you understand now, this ‘wrong time’ business I’ve brought up again and again? Do you understand and that nothing will make me change my mind?” and he said “But I want the baby,” and she said “Fine, but not this one and never with me. Break off with me completely and find a woman who does want one now and have it with her — I’m saying you should do that. In fact, I’m saying that this is probably the last time we should see each other; that right after this discussion—” and he said “So it is the kiss off,” and she said “All right, so that’s what it’s ending up being, but it’s not the word I’d use. It’s more a facing of reality, confronting it full out, seeing things as they—” and he said “They’re all the same and they add up to kiss off,” and she said “Then fine, then that’s what it is, this is the kiss off, but I’m also telling you we’re not good for each other anymore. Maybe we were for lots of things—” and he said “Maybe?” and she said “All right, we were, but never for a long-term life-together-for-forever or what for a while could be that type of tie-in and connection,” and he said “You just don’t want to say ‘love affair’ or ‘relationship,’” and she said “Certainly not ‘love affair’: I hate that term worse than ‘relationship.’ But also that the timing isn’t and was never really right for us and we fought that and lost and now you should gather up all your things you have here and go. This will help you find that woman to have that child you want, while I’m—” and he said “But you’re pregnant with our baby and I want that one, not just any woman’s; yours,” and she said “Believe me, Gould, if you want a baby so much that you’d have it with a woman who absolutely doesn’t want it or want to live with you and who’d make your life particularly miserable after having it till you’d want to brain her, I mean that, then you’ll find another more wonderful woman much better in the ways you want from me.” “Speak English,” he said, and she said “Don’t get mean and bitchy, I hate that too. A woman who’s agreeable and very receptive to marriage and kids and who’ll want yours and for them to look like you and you’ll be happy with her because she’ll love and admire you and give in and administer to all your needs and whims while with me you’ll be unhappy and dissatisfied, always, I promise, and often depressed, with a brief respite from the unhappiness and rest of the mess only every now and then. I like and appreciate many things about you but as I said, I don’t want our relationship to go on any longer than today or, if you want, from the time after you drop me off or pick me up at the abortion clinic, though where or why I came up with that drop-and-pick-me-up idea, I don’t know — skip it,” and he said “I have to have this baby. If we do then you’ll see, you’ll want to be with it and me and you’ll love having the baby, you’ll adore it and thank—” and she said “No, absolutely and unqualifiedly not,” and he said “Then I’ll have to force you to have it, that’s all, if there’s nothing else I can do,” and she said “Oh yes, and how?” and he said “I’m not sure — by stopping you from not having it,” and she said “And how do you think you can do that?” and he said “By locking you in your apartment or mine till you give birth, or that’s one way,” and she said “Look, no more playing around — just get out of here, will you? I don’t like the tone or the import and you’re becoming a moron. Collect your stupid stuff some other time when you’re less moronic, or I’ll send it over, but now I want you gone,” and he said “It’s no tone; I’m telling you, I could make you stay here, cutting you off from everything, or I’ll drive you to some remote place someplace — Maine, Vermont — to keep you locked in. And then when it’s too late to abort or miscarry, when your own health would be in jeopardy and there wouldn’t be any doctor or butcher who’d do it, I’ll let you out and you’ll have to have the kid and if you want to give it to me, great, or if you think I’m too wacky to give it to or you won’t to spite me and you want to put it up for adoption or hand it over to some relatives like your parents, then I’ll say I’m the doctor — the