and mean it, and he also felt at times he was only going with her for the sex and that if she suddenly said “No more for a while” and the “while” meant a few weeks or a month or more he’d stop seeing her, cut her off quick, and he wondered what it was stopping him from loving her — her intelligence, he finally decided, she just wasn’t smart enough or didn’t have the kind of artistic and creative brains he liked, someone intensely interested, or just more interested than she was, in all kinds of art and could see it with a certain clearness and talk about it right, and she was also at times so bourgeois — that was the word he used to himself, for he knew it sounded so condescending — even if she was sleeping with him and enjoying it and even initiating lots of the little things when they had sex, and not just in music and books and that she thought all sorts of opera was funny — just the mention of it made her laugh — but in furniture and clothes and cars, that she really did like certain kinds of women’s magazines and TV, that when they walked out of a movie he’d hated for its stupidity and obviousness she’d say it was very good if not great — this happened several times — and also what she wanted out of life: to be an elementary school teacher; he said “Outside of the long summer vacation, which I think every job should have, how could you go to the same classroom day after day with kids?” and she said “Because I’d love to and feel it’s the most hard-working rewarding professional profession of all the teaching fields,” and he said she ought to at least try to be a college teacher—“longer vacations and you only get to be with adults”—and she said “Why, if I love kids better and think teaching them is a much more important job?” and he said “Because it’s deeper work intellectually and you’ll get challenged — your brains will — more, and you’ll have more time to do research and with the longer vacations and fewer classroom hours you might even eventually have more time to spend with me,” and she said “Oh, you’re saying we’re going to last forever and ever till death do one of us part? and I’m certainly not in the least—most remote way — talking of marriage here; Jesus, no! but just that we’re going to go on for a long time?” and he said “Why not, what’s to stop us? but we’ll see — one year at a time for the time being, but you also become, by being an education professor, if that’s the field you want to go in to, an expert on one thing and more well read, and I’d think your conversations would also be better — who wants to hear all the things that go on with kids?” and she said “You don’t like what I read now or our conversations?” and he said “I’m talking about the future; our conversations are fine, you’re very bright, much brighter than me,” and she said “No I’m not and you know it,” and he said “We’re equal then with you holding a little lead,” and she said “You don’t believe that either; and if you don’t like the way I am or think or what I want to do with my life, then the hell with you, mister, you can take a flying leap right now,” and he said “Wait, hold it, I didn’t mean it that way,” and she was crying and they were sitting at the kitchen table in her parents’ apartment, having cake and a special mint tea she bought and he thought here’s a chance to get out of it for good; just say “Well, that’s it then as you said, I’ve had enough of this,” and leave and never call again and if she called him, to just say “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything but that last time told me everything that was wrong with us and was the finish and that’s all I’m going to say,” but he looked at her and her mouth and her pretty face, beautiful really, though not the smartest-looking, and her small nose and long hair in a thickly corded braid and those greenish though sometimes pale-bluish eyes he loved looking at but were now behind the closed crying lids and her mouth again, lips which he once told her, or twice, three times, she could model for cigarettes, which he’d hate for her to do because then it might mean she’d have to smoke, or lipstick or straws or ice cream pops, they were so perfectly shaped and he got an erection and looked at her breasts but her arms covered them and at her legs and bulge in the calf where it crossed over the knee making it look even more muscular and thought when she squeezes his waist with those it actually can hurt and then that if he goes now that’ll be the end of their sex for the day, which they’d planned on without saying so for her folks were away for the weekend at some resort upstate and for the second time in six months he was going to stay the night here, and still seated he edged his chair up to hers and touched her face with his hand and thought what she’d like for him to do, since this is what finally stopped her crying the only other time which was over nothing he did or said but something she’d remembered from her past, someone dead, is hold her and he held her and said “Tears tears tears, who needs them and why do I incite them, right?” and without opening her eyes she said “I don’t know,” and he said “But I’m right about my being wrong, right?” and she said “Right, if you say so,” and he said “I’m right: I’m wrong, wrong, really wrong,” and kissed one lid and she opened it and smiled and he said “Your face looks crooked that way,” and she opened the other eye and smiled and kissed his hand now back on her cheek and they kissed and hugged and then made love. Then she called one night and said “I have to talk to you tonight and it’s not something I want to say on the phone, can we meet?” and he said “It’s Wednesday and I’ve got an important German exam tomorrow plus my job after and I’ll probably be working there late,” and she said “So what are you saying? — one night, if I say it means so much to me, you can come up here even if it’s that inconvenient for you, do part of your studying on the subway, and it won’t take long,” and he said “It has nothing to do with anything like your being very sick, something you just found out about?” and she said no and he said “Then that’s a relief, but I think I know what it is,” and she said “Don’t say it; I’ve said enough already and people around here got big ears,” and he said “Where’re you calling from?” and she said “The candystore on Jerome, but just come up now,” and they met at a coffee shop in her neighborhood and she said she was pregnant and he said “That’s what I thought it was, even before I thought it might be that you’re sick,” and she said “You’re a genius, is that what you wanted to hear? — well, you are,” and he said “It’s not that, it was your voice,” and she said “Listen, stop it, we have things to discuss, and whatever you say next, don’t ask how it happened or if there was even a possibility of another guy or I’ll go crazy — I’m already crazy enough over it, what a thing!” and he said “All right, take it easy, I wasn’t going to ask, but it is kind of perplexing how it could have happened, for we were very careful, weren’t we?” and she said “‘He won’t, he won’t’—you won’t, you sure about that? What a joke. Of course, you ninny, but we did it a lot when we were doing it, so maybe my protection can only hold so much or for so long — overnight, I’m saying — once, remember? Or when we were