after you broke up?” and he said “That she got pregnant before, but told me after we broke up,” and Monty said “I was wondering, but it still smells a bit fishy to me. Listen, no disrespect meant to that lovely creature, but I wouldn’t run around telling people you got even that close to being a father, though it was certainly the more than decent thing to do to help her out with the abortion, I assume you were talking about,” and he said yes, and Anna said “What do they go for these days? You might not know this, but I had one — Monty and I — right when we were starting grad school, and before it turned out we couldn’t have children, and it cost us a then-walloping two hundred,” and he said “No, I didn’t know; I’m sorry. She didn’t give me the exact figure, but I managed to scrounge up three-fifty for her, which I think covered it completely and with maybe a few bucks to spare,” and she said “Wow, unbelievable, unbelievable; can you imagine that, Monty?” and Monty said “If she had one, then at that price I suspect it was done by a real physician,” and he said “I believe so.” He called her roommate when he got home and she said “It’s late, my new roommate has super hearing so can hear my talking through the walls, but besides all that I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. It’s too disturbing. If you want to discuss it, come here,” and he went to see her the next night. She said “I was devastated; she was my closest friend. There’s nothing I can tell you to add to anything, nor do I want to; you have no right to know,” and he said “So thanks, but why’d I come down here then?” and she said “I asked you here so I could say to your face what I’ve been hoping to since even before she died and that’s that you’re a rotten stinking scumbag. She was in trouble and asked you for help and you wouldn’t give it. You even hung up on her,” and he said “I didn’t hang up. I told her I’d call the next day with my decision and I thought it over and decided to help her as much as I could, financially and every other way — personally — but your line was busy and busy and busy, and same for the next day and the one after that. I gave up, thinking something was wrong with your phone — the operator didn’t think so; I called one and she checked your line — and that Lynette would call me, knowing something might be wrong with the phone, but she didn’t. When that happened I thought ‘Well, she wants to do it all herself; so let her.’ And then I got a letter from her a few weeks later saying everything was okay and the abortion a success and she had no bad feelings toward me anymore, and that was it, so why are you letting me have it like this?” and she said “Lynette never lied and I’m sure our phone was fine then. And that when you hung up on her you in effect kissed her off. And she was right, because you never came through with a red cent, not then nor when she later asked you in a letter to help cover it. It hurt her tremendously. To the point where I thought she was even thinking of harming herself because of it,” and he said “Oh, come on. What are you going to accuse me of next, the overdose?” and she said “I’m not. She was foolish that way, took too many chances. But I also know she was broken up over having to lose the fetus the way she did, and your fetus, for she told me it was yours. And also that she had to borrow from her parents to pay for it, and all that didn’t help her to not take chances at parties the months after or not to carry out her experiments on herself, I’ll call them, too far. But that’s all I wanted to say to you.” She closed her eyes, for a few seconds was silent in thought it seemed, and then said “Yes, that’s all. I don’t want to tell you anything else; you don’t deserve it. What she felt about you — she felt a lot. How you hurt her by taking her to certain places and not others and only seeing her in the evening or here, and so on, because she wasn’t the right color. I couldn’t understand why she continued dating you once she knew all this, and sleeping with you too? — she must have been out of her mind. But that was another problem she had, a psychological one with white guys — the fascination with the Other, and taking their shit, and all that crap, and the more egotistical and callous they were, the harder she fell for them. But get out of here, you bastard. Get out now,” and he said “Hold it, just hear me out, because she fell for who? — she didn’t fall for me,” and she said “Now, out, now, or I’ll yell for Janice in there to call the cops,” and he left. Who knows? he thought on the way home. She could have lied to her roommate too. Or who knows, the baby could have been his. Let’s say it was; well, he still shouldn’t feel responsible in any way for her death. Did he try to keep her under wraps? Okay, he did a little, but not that much and he did feel, and she must have seen this, more and more comfortable being with her — on the street, anyplace — the longer he knew her, and she could have said something if any of it bothered her, no? They just weren’t right for each other, that’s the main thing; for a long-term commitment or short-term romance or anything except an overnight fling, and maybe you don’t even want to start with something like that, and she should have been able to take care of herself. She said she could and he believed her, so why’s he being blamed by that neurotic witch and why was he before by Lynette? She gave off the presence, and this is what she wanted to give off, of someone able to look after every aspect of herself, so why wasn’t she? It couldn’t have been all a goddamn farce on her part, could it? And she knew as well as he they only went with each other for the sex and to have a good time other ways, and to see someone fairly steadily but not to be tied down, and things like that and maybe, just maybe there was a little more to it for both of them — some feeling — he even said that to her once about himself, and sometimes when he was with her he did feel it, for a moment, for a night, but he did — but that was about it, all they wanted at the time and all there was. Does he have it right? He thinks he does. Is he being straight with himself? He thinks so, or as much as he can when he hasn’t thought much about it before, and if he isn’t being straight, then only by a little. She liked his looks, he loved hers and her wildness most times and boldness and outspokenness and unconventionalness and the profession she was in and so forth, and same she for him with two or three of those and his intelligence, or at least his book knowledge — his critical abilities when it came to artistic things, she said — and they liked — for him it was nearly “worshipped”—each other’s bodies. They used to talk about it: “I’ve never seen such a hard perfectly shaped ass”—he; “I love your fat brawny neck; you look like you could jack up cars with it”—she; “Your biceps and popping veins in your forearms [she meant from the muscles] and large high-arched feet”; “Your endless legs and, solid as they are, the modeling clay — like way they curl around me”—he; “Your big dick with the beauty mark on it”; “Your every-single-time ready-to-go hole”—nothing brainy, nothing serious or new, except maybe for them; this is how they talked when they were alone in his flat or her room or on their bed, and if she missed a period a week or two after they last had sex — he can picture her right now lying in bed when she said that about his dick; he was sitting in a chair opposite her putting on his briefs; she still had the sheet over her shoulders and was sort of peeping out from behind it — why didn’t she call him then? Did he ask her that? He thinks he did. But if she said anything, right now he forgets. And same with her ass: he was in bed, she was standing nude in front of her bedroom’s long door mirror, leaning forward a little to inspect something on her face when he said that about its shape. He would have believed her if she’d called then. Be honest, would he have? More than her calling him three months later, and what she said then, he now remembers, is that she thought she could take care of it herself. What did she mean — a coat hanger, special pills, something like that? Did he ask her? He thinks he did, but now he can’t remember it. No, once she stopped seeing him — once they stopped seeing each other, for he doesn’t remember doing much to prevent it — she probably picked other guys up the way she did him or let other guys pick her up that way. In other words, the same way they’d met: at a party (or a bar), a little talk, eye contact, or lots of eye contact first and then talk, or asking someone to make the introduction, then necking in the kitchen (or at the bar) — even if she came to whatever she came to with someone else; all that mattered was if she was immediately taken with the new guy — and then to her home or his and the bed and up early next day for a dance rehearsal or class or the new thing she was thinking of starting to do: drama school. Or no new guys but just the old ones, some she had even discarded from the past. Or maybe even one of her homosexuals — for something different this time or to really give her a bang — decided, or she convinced him, to put it in. Oh, he’ll never know, so leave it at that. At what? At his not ever finally knowing for sure if the baby was really his and how responsible he should feel over it and so on. “So on” what? Her color and if he did mostly want it to be night and not day when he was with her outside and the rest of the things. “Rest of the things” what? Everything, all of it, too many and too much to think about right now, what’s he expect of himself? One thing leading to the other, from his baby to his not giving money to get rid of the baby, to her death — how much he should feel involved in it, “responsible” was the word he used. If he can never know, what can he do? Nothing, so for now forget it. He drank a lot at home that night, sat in the big easy chair and read yesterday’s and today’s Times while he drank and ate sliced carrots and pieces of cheese, and passed out. Her poor parents, he thought while he was drinking; Christ, what it must be like to lose such a beautiful high-spirited talented daughter in her twenties. To lose one anytime, any child, but this one in her early twenties at the most, right? He knows: they even celebrated her twenty-third birthday with a champagne split and two eclairs he brought to her apartment. “Here’s to you, Miss Twenty-three; not a significant number or earthshaking passage, like twenty-one, fifty, but just the right one perhaps for big things to open up for you. So here’s to ya, Linny La-la,” and they drank up, saved the pastry for later, saw a movie, came back, ate the eclairs and made love. Her younger sister, slightly older brother, or maybe he has them reversed, but such a live wire she was, how stupid could she have been to go screwing around with drugs or just using them in strange combinations? “Here’s to you, lovely Lynette,” he said from the chair, raising his glass of vodka and ice, standing up, newspapers and plate of carrots sliding off his lap to the floor, and holding the glass out, shooting the drink down, sitting down and from the chair pouring another. “What a phony I am, a fake, washout, drain — take take take, that’s all I do, can’t help a fucking soul and all I want is to get laid, right? Yes, I think so. Right? Yes, it’s goddamn true. Even now I want to go through my phone list to see who to call, but I won’t because I’m too sloshed to even move from this chair.” And such a gorgeous body. There you go again. But those legs, breasts, backside, cunt that was always ready for him and never stunk. Just shut up about it, stop, everything you’re thinking’s wrong. Then he passed out.