using yours you squirted a lot into it and some of it spilled over, but I don’t know — accidents in the making of these things at the place they’re made at. Or it could be that one day when I was so sure I didn’t need protection because I’d started bleeding, I did, and it was just nature that gave me a wrong signal,” and he said “You did ‘what’?” and she said “It needs explaining? I did need, I did need, but I’m only speculating with all these,” and he said “You’ve had a test?” and she said “I’m a woman, I know the signs, and yes, I’ve seen a doctor,” and he said “Okay, then what do we do?” and she said “If you don’t know, I have a solution. Through a cousin of his—” and he said “Who?” and she said “Someone, I’ll tell you later, I have the name of an a.b. man on Burnside,” and he said “That’s in the Bronx?” and she said “Yes, it’s a big avenue, cutting clear across it, almost — cast and west; this one’s on west,” and he said “What’s ‘a.b.’?” and she said “‘A.b.’ for you know what — to get rid of it, the a.b. man does — he performs them. He’s a real doctor, licensed, but does this on the side and we need three hundred dollars,” and he said “Where’re we going to come up with that?” and she said “You’ve told me you have some money saved,” and he said “I do, I forgot about that, a little,” and she said “How much?” and he said “A hundred twenty-five, maybe a hundred thirty-five — I haven’t had my interest posted in a long time, but no more than that, even with it,” when he had about four hundred, and she said “You take your hundred twenty-five or more, if there’s more — you’ll have to close your account, that’s all. And I’ll get my hundred and a few dollars and have to scrape together another fifty, and we’ll do it even-Steven: if I contribute more than you, then you owe me. But you’ll come with me for it, won’t you? Because if you don’t I’ll be afraid and mad, very mad, and you should be with me there and to take me home and this has never happened to me, so I’ll need someone like you,” and he said “Sure, what do you think?” but didn’t want to but would because if he didn’t she’d stop speaking to him, he was almost sure of that, or just stop sleeping with him, and he really was mostly going out with her to get laid, and if he did what she wanted she’d feel even better to him after that, not that she could do any more for him than she was or he’d even want her to. So she made the appointment, they went to the doctor’s office, the doctor said “Good, right on time,” and told him to go out for two hours and come back. He said “I thought I was supposed to stay — she wanted me to,” and then to her, since he really would rather be away from her during it, “Is it okay with you?” and she said “I don’t know, I don’t like it,” and the doctor said “Whether it’s okay with her or she likes it or not, it’s what you have to do, I don’t want any other person here during the procedures, for our own safety,” and he said “How do you mean, we in any danger?” and he said “Please, young man, valuable time’s wasting and if a minute more of it does I’ll have to ask the both of you to go,” so he left, said before he did “You’ll be all right?” and she said “I’m sure I will,” and gave him a scared, or maybe for his sake, a reassuring smile — he couldn’t tell which — went to a movie theater a few blocks away which he’d seen when they’d climbed out of the subway station, left in half an hour because he couldn’t sit there when he was feeling he wasn’t sure what, jittery, unhappy, guilty, not only worried for her but that they’d be caught by the police, sick in the stomach a little at what she was probably going through now, that she was there, legs strapped in, she’d told him what it’d probably be like and on something like an operating table, while he was watching a so-called serious art movie with people, when he looked around, looking at the screen so intently, walked around the neighborhood for about an hour and went back to the doctor’s building, knew he’d come back too soon but wanted to be there if just sitting in the waiting room while she was being finished up, buzzed the office from the lobby and the doctor said on the intercom “Yes?” and he said “It’s me, I’d like to be rung in, please,” and the doctor said “I’ll be done with my work in half an hour, sir, have a coffee someplace,” so he walked around some more, had a soda at a coffee shop, bought a paperback and read a few pages, went back; “Your friend is resting in the next room,” the doctor said, “but not to worry; she’s been there long enough and I think we can disturb her now,” and went into a room, came out with her with his hand supporting her elbow, she looked as if she’d been crying and said “I hurt so down there, but the doctor said it’ll all pass. I wasn’t out during it — not even a painkiller. He said the medical problems might really begin if he did one of those and he wanted me alert when I left and also so I’d be attentive to any bad symptoms. So I was altogether awake and it felt like I was having my guts scooped out,” and the doctor said “If it felt like that, young lady, it could only have been momentarily. I didn’t touch anything that didn’t need to be touched. You’ll be sore for a while, but that’s all,” and told her what to look out for: blood, hemorrhaging, severe cramps, and where to go if anything went wrong—“Not here but to a hospital, and just say you did it yourselves,” and Gould said at the door “Just one question, Doctor. When do you think, meaning in how long, we’ll be able to have sex again? — I’m only asking so she doesn’t take any chances with her body healing,” and she said “What a question — Forget he asked that,” to the doctor, and to him “How could you, Gould? I’ll know myself when I feel better, if I’ll ever even want to do it again after what I went through,” and he looked at her sharply, they’d given phony names and here she was using his real one, and she said “What’s the look for? Okay, okay, so I used your last name, I’m sorry,” and the doctor said “Not to worry, dear. Nobody gives me his right name and I could care less about it. And to me this ‘Gould’ could be yet another alias in a carefully concocted collaboration between the two of you to steer me away from your real names, and that could be par for the course too. Believe me, though: once you’re out of here I don’t know you and have never seen you and same, as far as it can be done, the other way around. As to your question, young man, it’s a legitimate one and something I should have addressed. Don’t have intercourse where there’s genital penetration till after her next period, even if that takes a month — So, that wasn’t too bad, was it, young lady? Now good-bye,” and they left, he helped her downstairs and on the street as they headed for the subway he thought over what he was thinking of saying to her and then said to himself “Ah, go on and say it, what’s the harm?” and he said “I can see how you’re not feeling good and what I’m going to say has nothing to do with anything today or tomorrow and so on, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold out on the intercourse for as long as the doctor said,” and she said “Oh, such urgency; such sensitivity; he even takes my current distress into consideration; what a man! As I already told you, sex is the last thing on my mind now, the absolute last, and if you mention it once more this week you’re guaranteed it never happening again between us and not as any punishment either but because you’re such a conceited heel.” They saw each other every weekend till summer; then she got a counselor job at a sleepaway camp, wanted him to come with her and he applied but the camp had nothing for him and he said he’d write her a lot and try visiting her on one of her days off. She wrote him less and less after the first two weeks and her letters had become kind of cold. She’s found someone else, he thought. Well, that’s okay, for he was seeing someone at the Catskill resort he got a waiter’s job at, though not anyone he felt deeply about; a waitress who covered his station and helped him set up when he was behind and put out for him whenever he wanted and was pretty and his age and fairly smart and who one day he might even get to like a lot; she was bubbly, compared to the other one, and not as dark about life and liked having fun more. He called his girlfriend at camp and she said “What is it? I’m only supposed to be taken away from my kids for an emergency and you must have said it was, else they never would have dragged me up here,” and he said “So I lied to speak to you; so big deal, my terrible sin, that I wanted to hear your voice so much after six weeks. So tell me, how come you hardly write anymore and when you do your words are just bursting with warmth, that’s all I want to know,” and she said “You asked, but you really want an answer?” and he said “Why else?” and she said “Okay. I’ve been seeing this man — the head counselor, if you want to know — and I felt bad about it because of you and didn’t know how to say it. But let’s face it: you never really loved me. You only said you did when I asked, but you loved my body more and only liked and appreciated the rest of me a little, maybe, isn’t that true?” and he said “If he’s the head counselor, why would they give you any crap about going to a phone?” and she said “You know that has nothing to do with what I was saying. I was talking about what I was to you before the summer, but by now that’s a moot point,” and he said “Oh, moot is it, moot? What the hell’s that, something you put on a trombone?” and she said “Are we going to start arguing again, and you extra stupidly, after not seeing each other for so long?” and he said “No. Anyway, before the summer, you were saying that you think you meant little to me. Well, not so, you were more than that, much more, and I’ll be honest and say I miss you a lot and you never know what can happen in the future too. My feelings to you could get much better, three times, four times, go sky high,” for he thought who’s he going to screw in New York when he gets back? Not the waitress. She comes from Hartford and will be in college near Boston and who wants to go up there every weekend or every other one or any time, no matter how much he might get to like her, since she’ll be with thirty girls and a house mother in a sorority house, so where will he even stay? Not in a hotel, on what he makes, and just the bus or train fare. But she said “Gould, there’s not going to be any future for us, I’m no seer but I see that and I’m sorry. And this fellow I’m seeing is serious about me and I think I’m in love with him too, so he looks like a much better prospect for the future than you,” and he said “Does he live in New York?” and she said “Close. Jersey; Trenton,” and he said “Do you know how far Trenton is from New York? How will you ever get to see him?” and she said “It’s at the most an hour and a half away by train and he said he’ll come in as often as I want. And he has his own apartment, so I can stay with him when I’m there,” and he said “Have you ever seen Trenton? I have, from the train. It’s a dump — seedy, ugly; maybe you’ll end up living there. Well, good, go on, but it’ll be the end of your intellectual or just spiritual life for good — shitholes like that tear an intelligent person down,” and she said “What would you know about what cities do? You’ve lived in