g. I don’t know; that I thought I was smarter and cleverer and more capable than I am and also maybe believing that some cheap home remedies, as someone told me, would work, and which I never even got around to try, I’m so lazy — okay?” and he said “I’m still a little skeptical about this,” and she said “Does that mean you’re not going to help me?” and he said “Let me think about it,” and she said “I’ve arranged an abortion in two days and I need help fast if you’re going to help — that means money right away and it also means, if you really want to be helpful, coming with me when I go in for it,” and he said “I still have to think about it first; I’ll call you tomorrow,” and she said “You were never like this, that I remember — so what happened?” and he said “We’ve been split up for a while, you know, so I don’t have the right to be skeptical?” and she said “I don’t see where the two equate. No, I’ll say, you don’t have the right, because haven’t I always been straight-out and open with you, holding nothing back?” and he said “Yeah, I guess, but I also think I do have a reason for being at least somewhat skeptical, for who knows what could have happened with you the last three months; but I’ll call tomorrow, I swear,” and she said “Fuck you then, you shithead; call nobody tomorrow as I never want to talk to your ugly snake face again,” and hung up. He didn’t call and a month later got a letter from her saying “Don’t ask me why I’m being so conciliatory to you in relating all this, but here goes: the good news. Everything worked out A-OK. If you want to contribute to the fund that made it this way, you can send whatever you want, although $200 would be fine and rock-bottom and quite fair. No matter what, papa is off the hook, even if he contributes zero. How’s that for gracious pardons, and I don’t mean the excusez-me kind. Best and much luck. Yours sincerely and honestly.” He thought why should he send her anything? It probably was some other guy who was responsible, or easily could have been. Sure, she was usually honest and direct to him, or seemed to be, but sometimes he didn’t think she was telling the truth. Even with the two homosexuals. He bets both those guys, or has a sneaky suspicion, were straight and she just said they weren’t . for what? So his ego wouldn’t be bruised, or something? Or so he wouldn’t feel he was one of four guys sticking it in her, and all the images that brings up, and maybe sometimes the four of them in a week, or five guys, even, or six — because how would he know for sure? As for the contribution, he didn’t know what to do. Maybe a hundred, or more like fifty, which was about what he could afford. Either would help out a little and shut her up — for sure a hundred would — and cut him off from her for good. Well, maybe, but a hundred the max. He sent nothing. He never heard from her again. About a year later he was at a friend’s apartment for dinner, a married couple, and while the woman was washing the dishes and he was drying them she said “You know, of course, that Lynette Taylor died,” and he said “What? What’re you saying? Lynette? The dancer?” and she was nodding and he said “But what do you mean? What could’ve happened?” and felt faint, at least his legs got weak, and he had to sit and was still holding the dish and towel and the woman took the dish out of his hand and said “Why are you so white? What’s wrong? You look sick,” and he said “Don’t you know?” and she said “Know what? That you went out with her a couple of times and more than likely shtupped her? — for she was a free bird if there ever was one. But what of it? So did a lot of men,” and he said “I went out with her for months; maybe a half year. Two to three times a week. She wanted to marry me. I was very close to her. She was pregnant with my baby once and had an abortion — a year ago, or sometime around that,” and she said “That I also didn’t know — Monty, come in here, Gould’s not feeling well,” and her husband came into the room and said “What’s wrong, your stomach?” and he said “Anna just told me Lynette, the dancer, died,” and Monty said “And you didn’t know? I thought everyone who knew her had at least heard about it. Overdose, at a party; got sick, went into the bedroom to rest and she never woke up. What, a month ago?” to Anna and she said “I think so; no more than that,” and Monty said to him “She wasn’t an addict; it might have been the first time she took the stuff. Cocaine with the booze, they said. But she just stopped breathing,” and Anna said “He took it so badly before I thought he was going to have a stroke himself. Did you know they were so close?” and Monty said “I knew they saw each other sometimes, and that Tim Rudd was pissed, someone said, because Gould took her away from him at a party — or something like that happened, anyway — but that’s about it,” and she said “That’s what I remember too, except for the Tim thing. Once at a party I saw Gould and Lynette, is all, though I don’t recall any incandescence between them, do you?” and Monty said “Never, which is why we’re both so surprised, Gould. What were you doing, hiding it?” and he said “What do you mean, because of her color?” and Monty said “Yes, if you want me to be honest about it,” and he said “But it’s not so; I came to a few parties with her that you two were at, you don’t remember?” and Anna said “Just that one that I can recall,” and he said “Well, I haven’t been invited to many for the past year or so, so maybe that’s why,” and she said “To be frank with you, I think that’s because you were usually telling people off at parties — getting drunk, maybe, to do it — and they were getting bugged by your attitude,” and he said “Well, I don’t know, people we know have become so freaking . . middle class or something, lately, and it got to me — long ago — and their minds like compression machines, so old before their time when before they were so lively, talked about writing, thought about art, were going to chip away at walls in whatever field we went in, were freer and didn’t just think advancement and money. But I still can’t believe it about her — Lynette, her dying. There wasn’t a funeral? Or there was and you went and never thought to tell me?” and Anna said “What did they do with her, honey?” and Monty said “Her family came up and brought her back to Raleigh to be buried and there wasn’t even a memorial here for her, that I’m aware of. Was there and we just missed it?” and she said “We would have known, and gone to it, of that I’m positive,” and Monty said “True, we would have known, but why would we have gone to it? She wasn’t, to be perfectly honest, anything particularly special in our lives, though really a nice, beautiful girl, I thought, and from everything I heard, a terrific modern dancer,” and he said “Poor Lynette,” and Anna said “She was beautiful — gorgeous, is more like it. Those cheeks, and with a gorgeous figure, which is to be expected. I can see why you were drawn to her — I think Monty, by what he said, was too — but I’d think she’d be too wild for you after a few times for almost anybody. Unlike Monty, I wasn’t surprised when I heard about it; nor do I believe what I’m saying is I’m almost positive she was involved with hard drugs for a while, or she was heading for it. She seemed to want to try anything; you could see it in her gaze and by what she said. That wasn’t the time I saw her with you, Gould, but — Tim, for instance; I forget if that was before or after you — and with others, I think, or alone. But you said she was pregnant with your baby?” and Monty said “She was? I never heard that,” and Anna said “Don’t believe it, Gould, just don’t, or have very strong doubts. It could have been no baby or one from any number of men, because someone as wild as she was could also be an imaginative and, all right, I’ll say it, a conniving liar too,” and he said “She said she was pregnant and that I was the father, and when a woman says that you have to believe it unqualifiedly and help her out,” and she said “You went to the doctor with her and everything — I mean, the abortionist too?” and he said “She said I didn’t need to and that she in fact didn’t want me there — this was after we broke up, you understand. That she was plenty independent enough to do all of it herself — her words, almost verbatim,” and Monty said “She told you she got pregnant