Times, which had been delivered to the front door — he’d forgot about that — and said “You won’t — last shot? — change your mind?” She didn’t look up. “Only joking; not joking, but of course you won’t. So, tell the cops I’ll be home in about half an hour, that’s how long it should take me if I make good subway connections, and for them not to come with their weapons drawn, as I’m prepared to go peacefully and anyway, long life and much luck,” and put the keys to her apartment on the little table by the door and left. She didn’t call the police or she did and they didn’t come and he never saw nor heard from her again. A few years later he was walking up the aisle of a city bus and saw a friend of hers in a seat and said “Oh, hi,” and she said “My goodness, Gould, hello,” and he stood beside her and said “You are your name? Excuse me, it’s been some time,” and she said “Sharon La Verge,” and he said “Right, I remember you and Maria and once we all went to a movie—Passions of Anna, I think; one of the more intense Bergmans around at the time how’s she doing?” and she said “Anna?” and he said “You know, or maybe you’ve lost contact,” and she said “She’s fine, married, to an extremely nice fellow, living in Worcester, Mass., but she gets in every now and then. They have a house, with a patio with a tree growing right through it, and are trying to have a child . . wait a second, I shouldn’t be telling you this; I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you,” and he said “Why?” and she said “You’re saying you don’t know?” and he said “Some incident she might have told you?” and she said “What else, that isn’t enough?” and he said “You realize — I’m sure she does — I was mostly kidding at the time. It only went on for less than a day — overnight, granted, perhaps making it seem worse in the retelling of it than it was, and right after sunrise I was out and never saw her again,” and she said “She didn’t think it funny. She called it horrible and that she feared for her life during part of it and for more than a week after she was still fearful you’d come back and that she thought of calling the police,” and a man and woman in front of her turned around and looked at them and then quickly turned forward again, and he said lower “And I told her ‘Go on, call them.’ I mean, admittedly I was upset if not in a certain way out of control for a while, but never so out of it where I was going to flip over the edge, because of what I didn’t want to lose—you know. But I knew she wouldn’t call them because she knew I knew . . I mean I knew she knew she had nothing on me. It was a spat, a very troubling argument, a major point I was trying to make about what there was at stake, and I was serious about the objective of it — what I wanted but not what I’d do to get it — because she did tell you the reason I acted up like that, right?” and she said “Yes, naturally, would I be sitting here nodding all this time if she hadn’t?” and he said “Well, I wanted it so badly, so of course I wouldn’t have hurt her for anything; to do that would be to hurt what I wanted more than anything in the world then, and I kept telling her that and she knew it. She also had to know that in telling you different she was only trying to turn it into a larger event in her life than it was. Or maybe, in addition to everything else she was also distraught she was going to have it . an operation,” and motioned with his head to the couple in front of her, “so that did it, or could have, for what woman, even if having the, you know, was the last thing she wanted at the time — a baby — wouldn’t also have tremendous regrets over the—” and slit his finger through the air, “am I right?” and she pointed to where he’d slit and said “That finger across; I didn’t get it,” and he said “The end, the procedure, the termination,” and she said “Ah, I see. But no matter what, you’d never convince Maria you weren’t serious then in your threats. But that was between you two and is long in the past and I’m sorry I brought it up in the short time we have to talk — my stop’s coming soon,” and he said “Oh, too bad. So how have things been with you?” and she said “Fine, fine, but you know what life’s like: the good often looks better than it is and the bad often looks worse, but on the whole everything evens out and is nice. Married too . happy; a good unharried life, exactly the way I like it. We’ve decided not to have children — made that decision; people always ask so I’m telling you this right out. It’s simply not anything we want,” and he said “How would you know so long beforehand?” and she said “We wouldn’t be good parents; we’re both too involved in what we do and see this as a lifetime practice, and we thought this individually long before we met. But don’t start on me too,” and he said “Sure, I wasn’t saying, and I’m glad everything seems to be going so well for you. What kind of work you do?” and she said “Same as then, computers, which I like, my husband too and you, how are you getting along?” and he said “Work, health, spirits, all fine, and I’ve been seeing a woman the last year and a half and we’ll probably get married end of the year or early next — we don’t foresee anything that’ll stop us — and right after that have children I’ve got to before people think I’m their grandpa,” and she said “Why worry about that?” and he said “I really don’t. And, well you wouldn’t know but I don’t live here, I live in Baltimore and only come up weekends to see her, till she eventually moves down with me,” and she said “So she’s still working here; that makes sense,” and pushed the stop tape and he said “Yours, huh? — I forgot where you lived, or you probably moved. Anyway, if you see Maria — I hope she won’t mind this — but please give her my regards and congratulations on her marriage and, between you and me, I hope she has a child if she wants one that much,” and she said “They both do but they’ve taken all the tests and it seems each of them has something wrong for it, so it doesn’t look good,” and he said “I hope the a.b. had nothing—” and she said “No, that’s been ruled out, it must be something since then, though I did say it was both of them,” and she got off and when he got to his woman friend’s apartment he told her about whom he met on the bus and where he knew her from and for the first time about how he tried to force Maria to have the baby.